Chapter 20: The Fighting Nation (Part II)

During this period, the Abbasid Caliphate had essentially lost control over its territories, leaving powerful feudal lords to carve out their own domains. In Central Asia, descendants of Parthian nobility established the Samanid Empire—a regime that followed the Islamic faith but remained culturally Persian.

This dynasty represented one of the first attempts by Persians to establish political authority through the medium of Islam. Medieval Persian historians often referred to it as the second renaissance of the Persian Empire. They also resumed missionary activities in the East, hoping to expand their sphere of influence.

To the northeast of the Samanid Empire lay the Kara-Khanid Khanate, founded by exiles following the disintegration of the Uyghur Khaganate. At the time, the Kara-Khanids were embroiled in a succession struggle. Around 954, during the reign of Emperor Shizong of the Later Zhou, the Khan’s nephew, Satuk, was persuaded by Samanid missionaries to convert to Islam. With substantial support from the Samanids, he overthrew his uncle’s rule. This is generally considered the beginning of the adoption of Islam by Turkic tribes.

However, the turmoil within the Kara-Khanid Khanate drew the attention of the oasis city-state of Khotan. Seizing the opportunity, Khotan launched an attack on the Khanate, capturing its eastern capital, Kashgar. Subsequent conflicts between the two sides saw the city change hands multiple times.

For the Kara-Khanid Khanate, the situation was precarious. To their northeast lay the Liao Dynasty. To the east were the Gaochang Uyghurs and the Guiyijun regime of Shazhou. To the southeast were the various Tibetan tribes on the plateau. If even an oasis city-state could gain the upper hand against them, these other powers were even more formidable.

Constantly fighting back and forth over their capital was not a sustainable strategy. The Khanate desperately needed a new direction for expansion. Since the days of the Turkic Khaganate, previous regimes had almost exclusively focused their ambitions on the East. Even when driven into the Western Regions, ambitious Khans always dreamed of fighting their way back.

But the adoption of Islam offered a new perspective: since they had embraced the faith of the West, they could participate in the power struggles of the Islamic world instead of beating their heads against the East. If they could not defeat Khotan, they could surely handle someone else.

The enlightened Satuk Bughra Khan immediately launched a war against the Samanid Empire—the very entity that had converted him. The Samanid Empire was a hegemon of the Islamic world, controlling vast territories from the river basins of Central Asia to the Persian heartland. In short, they were incredibly wealthy.

This war brought the Kara-Khanids rich spoils, establishing a path dependency: if they suffered losses in the East, there was no need to fear; they could simply strike the Persians to make up for it, recovering quickly. The war on the western front lasted until 992, when Hasan Bughra Khan captured the Samanid capital of Bukhara, marking the beginning of the Samanid collapse. These successes gave the Kara-Khanids the confidence to engage in a decades-long war of attrition with Khotan.

The eastern front, however, was far more brutal. To resist the westward expansion of Khotan, the Khanate lost a vast number of its adult male members in battle, including the conqueror of the Samanids, Hasan Bughra Khan himself. At the height of the conflict, not a single male descendant of Satuk Khan remained alive, leaving women to hold the line. Even Hasan’s sister was killed by the Khotanese while attempting to avenge him.

Nevertheless, the resilience of the Kara-Khanid Khanate proved far greater than that of Khotan. Satuk’s great-grandsons persuaded believers from various lands to launch an expedition in their support. Four Imams led volunteers recruited from Ghazni, Khwarazm, Baghdad, and elsewhere into the war. This time, the counterattack succeeded, and they breached the city of Khotan.

Khotan was a city-state; the Kara-Khanids could afford to lose their capital repeatedly, but for Khotan, losing it once was fatal. The King of Khotan surrendered, ending the Yuchi dynasty.

Yet, the victors could not enjoy their triumph. Some Khotanese troops who refused to surrender escaped the city and, with the support of Tibetan tribes, set an ambush along the route. The Kara-Khanids were caught off guard and attacked during their retreat. Historians recording this battle lamented that "the holy warriors were slaughtered like an avalanche." The entire expeditionary force was wiped out, and all four Imams perished.

This pyrrhic victory made further warfare unsustainable. Afterward, the Kara-Khanid Khanate collaborated with the Song Dynasty in a few raids against Western Xia, but both sides had limited combat effectiveness and achieved no significant results. As for the Liao Dynasty to the north, the Kara-Khanids actively joined their tributary system, eventually earning the opportunity for a marriage alliance and taking a Buddhist Liao princess as a bride.

The Kara-Khanids were very proud of this, even persuading other Islamic nations to join the tribute system and acting as a matchmaker to introduce the Ghaznavid Empire into a similar marriage alliance. Beyond their father-in-law, the Khanate was also highly respectful toward the Northern Song, addressing them as "Uncle" in their correspondence. Clearly, with both a father-in-law and an uncle to back them up, life was much more secure.

But for the Islamic world, there was no peace. The Kara-Khanids' "new strategy" set a disastrous precedent. Thereafter, nomadic tribes wandering the Western Regions and Central Asia followed suit. No one bothered to struggle against the tough powers in the East anymore.

During the Tang Dynasty, the Iron Gate Pass in southern Central Asia had repelled numerous Turkic incursions. Now, however, the Persians were powerless. Turkic tribes rushed to find opportunities to move south, invading the Persian heartland. The Turkic languages they brought replaced the original Indo-European languages of Central Asia, and from then on, the Persians never regained their former glory. Persian regimes were destroyed one after another, and Turkic warlords ran rampant, vying for hegemony and causing severe destruction.

Guo Kang wondered if the Persians ever regretted their initial impulse to go out and proselytize.

This series of events also had a lasting impact on the Islamic world. The Caliph in Baghdad became a complete puppet, unable to hold onto even the mastership of a single city. Over time, this evolved into a strange system somewhat akin to Japan’s: powerful Turkic warlords would march to Baghdad to "enter the capital," forcing the Caliph to confer the title of Sultan upon them, thereby establishing hegemony over the entire Islamic world.

The Caliphs were constantly being seized by warlords, living in utter misery. Some, unable to bear the overbearing military leaders, even violated ancestral tradition and fled their homes, but in the end, they could only accept reality.

The root cause of all this, ironically, was inadvertently set in motion by the Tang and Liao dynasties. People of later generations might not have heard of this obscure history, but in Guo Kang’s time, these were issues that deeply affected many lives. If he were to tell a historically knowledgeable Persian scholar that he was, in fact, a very peace-loving, gentle, and weak person, the other party would likely think he was being sarcastic and be driven to the brink of a stroke.