A HISTORY OF INNER ASIA

chapter two
The Kök Turks, the Chinese expansion, and the Arab
conquest
In 622, as we have said, the steppe empire of the Kök Turks stretched
from Mongolia to Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan, with the valleys of the
Orkhon and Chu representing the cores of its eastern and western
wings.At both ends the Turks had lively relations with great sedentary
empires and civilizations to the south.In the east, China was the immediate
neighbor; in the west, Sasanian Iran.
There was one significant diference, however: the buffer zone represented
by Transoxania.Its Sogdian princes recognized the suzerainty of
the Turkic qaghans ever since their earlier overlords, the Hephtalite
kings of Afghanistan, were defeated by a Turko-Persian coalition in the
first half of the 560s.Khurasan, also a Hephtalite possession, fell to Iran,
and the two empires were thus separated only by the Amu Darya.The
sedentary Sogdian inhabitants of Transoxania endeavored to foster
peaceful, especially mercantile contacts with all their neighbors, and
were content to recognize, as we have said, the suzerainty of the Turkic
qaghans.Above all, the Persians made only rare and unsuccessful
attempts to penetrate Transoxania, and never the home ground of the
Turks in the steppes, in contrast to Chinese diplomacy and military campaigns.A
dramatic illustration of the latter is provided by the attacks
mounted by the Tang emperor Tai-tsung (600–49; ruled from 627) in
630, and by the reduction, over the next fifty years, of the Kök Turkic
empire’s eastern wing to the position of a Chinese vassal.
Moreover, the Chinese also carried out a successful conquest of
Sinkiang, with the city of Kashgar as its western metropolis.This conquest
proved more lasting and deliberate than that of the Turkic territories,
possibly because it covered settled areas and was thus both more
feasible and more tempting.It also made China the immediate neighbor
of Transoxania and Semireche.This led to complex relationships: on
the political level, some of the petty monarchs recognized nominal
Chinese suzerainty, hoping to share the Middle Kingdom’s prestige and
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