A HISTORY OF INNER ASIA

Kök Turks, Chinese expansion, and Arab conquest 67
major campaigns east and west.Furthermore, the Uighurs had lively,
mostly friendly relations with China, including trade and family alliances
with the Tang dynasty.There were other differences between
them and the Kök Turks.The new dynasty had a distinct capital city,
called Qarabalghasun or Ordubaligh; some segments of the population
began to settle and practice agriculture; and Manichaeism became the
state religion when Tengri Qaghan (759–79), on a visit to the other
Chinese capital, Loyang (one of the two capitals of Tang China, the
better-known one being Changan, the present-day Xian), was converted
by missionaries who came there with the Sogdian trading colony.The
conversion effected a psychological switch in the mentality of the elite,
a change quite palpable in the contrast between the tenor of the inscriptions
on steles erected by the Uighur qaghans at Qarabalghasun and that
of the earlier ones of the Kök Turks.The martial pride of the pagan
dynasty was replaced by the compassionate ethic of the new converts, a
mutation not unlike that effected many centuries later by the conversion
of the Eastern Mongols to Buddhism.Here is an excerpt from an
inscription in Qarabalghasun:
Let the people accept the Religion of Light.Let the country with barbarous
customs and reeking blood change into one where the people abstain from
eating meat.Let the state where men kill be transformed into a kingdom where
good works are done.
The Uighurs did, however, retain for the time being one remarkable
feature of the Kök Turkic civilization – their rune-like script.
the battle of 751
Meanwhile, in the territories formerly identifiable as the western wing of
the Kök Turkic empire, an evolution not unlike that in the east took
place, when tribes commonly labeled as Türgesh gained ascendancy and
developed a symbiotic relationship with the settled fringes of their
domains and with Transoxania.In addition to Suyab, a city in the valley
of the Chu, we should also mention Talas (also spelled Taraz, near
modern Jambul), another such town farther west near the Talas river, as
counterparts to the Qarabalghasun of the Uighurs.Moreover, the still
shamanistic Turks of Semireche soon experienced the approach of the
Muslims, and eventually were converted to Islam.This process was first
triggered by a relatively minor incident which would, however, have historic
consequences.
Sinkiang had by this time – the middle of the eighth century – been