#Tang Dynasty #Arab Empire was a competitor of the Tang Dynasty, and its military strength was very fierce. However, in terms of its comprehensive national strength, the Arab Empire was far inferior to the Tang Dynasty. The specific descriptions are as follows:
First, the economic aspect is relatively good. The Tang Dynasty was a prosperous and powerful dynasty, and its economic development and scale developed by leaps and bounds. In the last years of the Sui Dynasty, a large amount of terra nullius was generated due to war and chaos, which enabled the continuous implementation of the equalized field system and was of great help to stabilize agriculture. Even after the Anshi Rebellion, although North China was in ruins, the Tang government could rely on the economy of Jiangnan for sustained recovery. Since the Sui and Tang dynasties, China's economy has entered a higher stage of development.
Chang'an, the capital of the Tang Dynasty, was very prosperous and lively, with a variety of commodities, various shops selling goods in the city, and foreign businessmen gathered, which contributed to the prosperous situation. The Silk Road has a far-reaching influence for future generations, promoting trade communication and development at home and abroad, the famous Tang Xuanzang learned from the scriptures, in fact, it was also the development of transportation and the enlightenment of policies during the Tang Dynasty, which made there be cultural exchanges and collisions at home and abroad. The policy was enlightened, prosperous, and the common people had something to do, which created a stable situation during the Tang Dynasty. Du Fushi described that recalling the heyday of the kaiyuan in the past, Xiaoyi was hiding thousands of families. Rice is white, and public and private warehouses are abundant. Directly wrote about the harvest at that time, the national strength of the Tang Dynasty was strong, the four seas were clear, and the people lived and worked in peace and contentment and lived a rich life.
With the formation of the Arab Empire, the commercial aristocracy also became an important component of the upper ruling class. As a result, the Arab empire and Muslim countries had an industrial and commercial prosperity that was not the same as the feudal civilizations of the East and the West at that time. Many Muslim merchants are active on the three continents of Asia, Europe and Africa, engaged in business activities mainly based on intermediary trade.
The rich "granaries" of the Two Rivers valley and the Nile Valley provided the Empire with abundant products, the main crops including wheat, barley, rice, dates and olives, and horticultural crops were also quite abundant, including dates, olives, plums, peaches, apricots, oranges, apples, watermelons, grapes and various vegetables. During the Abbasid dynasty, arable land area and yield increased significantly due to the development of irrigation projects. In the southern arabian peninsula, due to its oasis location, dates, grains and vegetables are abundant. The Arab nation itself is a nomadic people, and the Arabian Peninsula and other desert semi-desert areas are rich in sheep, horses and camels. The production of linen, cotton, velvet blankets, pottery and other products (and sometimes silk) produced in various places is conducive to both local consumption and export. The Arabs also learned papermaking from prisoners at the Battle of TheRos in 751.
The second is cultural comparison. There are many kinds of literature and art in the Tang Dynasty, including poetry, prose, biographies, Tang legends, etc., especially poetry, and there are now about 50,000 poems left behind, producing a large number of poets and other writers. Other arts such as painting, music, dance, sculpture, etc. were developed; Ideologically Confucianism and Taoism are compatible with development; The revision of history flourished, the first official organization to revise history, a variety of revisions of the history of the Southern Jin Dynasty and Sui Dynasty, and produced many history books; And political culture, commercial culture, diplomatic culture all reflect a different mind, with a brilliant atmosphere of beauty.
The poetry of the Tang Dynasty was diverse in genre, and mature grammatical poems appeared and constituted the main body of Tang poetry, and also gave birth to the song ci; The content is expanded, the field of vision is broad, and the styles are diverse, such as border poems, landscape poems, pastoral poems, ranger poems, etc.; The prose movement promoted the development of biographies, essays, travelogues, etc., and there were essays han Yu and travelogue sketches Liu Zongyuan; The novel produced the Tang legend, which became the direct source of the novels of future generations and opened up the road of literature in later generations. These can be said to be "clothed and word-wearers", and they are far away from generation to generation.
Other art disciplines such as painting, music, calligraphy, dance, sculpture, etc. The overall level of calligraphy is very high, and there are yan zhenqing, Liu Gongquan, Ouyang Qing, and other calligraphers, who have become models of calligraphy in later generations, and the calligraphy they created has become the main form of Chinese characters in later generations - zhengkai. The culture of the Tang Dynasty presents the characteristics of eclecticism, rich diversity, bold innovation, lofty atmosphere, and splendor and grandeur, which constitute the unique personality of Tang Dynasty culture.
The word "Arabia" originally meant aqueous grass, desert, and desert land. The birthplace of Arabic literature is the Arabian Peninsula, where the original inhabitants are a branch of the Semitic people, called the "Bedouin" people, meaning steppe nomads.
Prominent representative poets of the Abbasid period include Nuwas, Mutainebi and Mai Ali. During his lifetime, Mutainai left behind a large number of hymns, love poems, satirical poems, etc., many of which have become the most popular aphorisms and idioms in the Arab world. European modern and contemporary scholars attach great importance to the study of Mai Ali, such as the British Orientalist Nicholson introduced his "Book of Forgiveness" at the end of the last century, the Spanish scholar Bratheus wrote an article in 1919 to explore the possibility of the Divine Comedy being influenced by the "Book of Forgiveness", and so on. The Chinese characters in the western part of the Arabian Peninsula are the most important commercial avenues since ancient times, reaching the Mediterranean Sea, Europe in the north and India in the south, and Mecca is the most important commercial city on this avenue.
The third is military comparison. The Arab Empire clashed directly with the Tang Dynasty, mainly in the early eighth and mid-eighth centuries. At the beginning of the eighth century, in the middle and late period of the Umayyad Dynasty, the Tang Dynasty overthrew Wu Zetian and restored it to the early years of Tang Xuanzong's reign; In the middle of the 8th century, at the beginning of the Abbasid dynasty, during the Tianbao period of Emperor Xuanzong of Tang, on the eve of the outbreak of the Anshi Rebellion. Between these two periods, the Arab Empire was mainly opposed to the Western Turk Turks, with the Tang Dynasty standing behind the Tuqishi, who represented the Tang Dynasty in its defense against the Arabs. The reason for the conflict between the Arab Empire and the Tang Dynasty was the struggle for Central Asia.
In the ninth year of Tianbao (750), Gao Xianzhi was ordered to send an army and take the initiative to attack The Great Eclipse, and encountered the Great Eclipse army at Qiluo. The Zizhi Tongjian records that Gao Xianzhi led 30,000 people to fight the enemy, and finally thousands of Tang troops returned to Anxi. Based on this calculation, the Tang army lost at most thousands of people, and the attrition was mainly the GeLulu army that surrendered to the enemy and the losing Army of The Bahanna Army. The year after the Battle of Qiluo, the Anxi Tang army, while stationed in various parts of Anxi, was also able to divide its troops and expedition to defeat Tubo and capture the strategic location of Tubo. The Arabs immediately sent people to make peace with the Tang Dynasty, indicating that the losses of the Tang army in the Battle of Qiluo were very small, and the strength of the Anxi Tang army was not weakened by the Battle of Qiluo. The overall strength of the Tang Dynasty, as well as its influence in the Western Regions, was not shaken; After the war, the Tang Dynasty still controlled the Western Regions and continued to expand in Central Asia.
