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The Struggle for Control of the Silk Road

Nowadays we think of Tibet as a quiet, contemplative Buddhist sanctuary high on the Himalayan plateau. It is often a big adjustment for people to realize that in the seventh and eighth centuries, Tibet was an empire that ranged, at its greatest extent, from the Oxus river in the west to the Tien Shan and Ferghana to the Great Wall in the North, to well past its present borders in the east and which had once included Nepal in the south. The history of animosity between Tibet and China -- and the lengths to which they often went to avoid direct conflicts with each other and play the favorite older sibling game, "Let's you and him fight" -- is very long-standing and extremely interesting in itself.

China, too, had interests throughout Central Asia and Turkistan, which corresponds roughly to the Turan Flats area. China, Tibet, the Arabs and the Turkmen were all keen on control of the Silk Road, and the Ferghana area, and Tibet's "Four Garrisons," the cities of Kucha, Aksu, Uc-Turfan and Kashgar, on the southern slopes of the Tien Shan Mountains which define the eastern edge of the Turan Flats. On the map at left, these cities are where northern branch of the Silk Road (the red lines) crosses Turkestan just before the Road forms into the Chinese frontier. Remember that even in the single century the map was drawn to cover, the borders shown were very mutable and often changed dramatically on a yearly basis.

At various times from the seventh to the ninth centuries, either China, Tibet, or, infrequently, Damascus more or less held sway in Turkistan. The Turkmen, for the most part, seem to have allied themselves with whomever it was most politically expedient at the time; sometimes with the controlling agency, sometimes with "the enemy of my enemy." Many times, however, they controlled their own area, keeping out one empire or the other by offering valuable tribute -- their horses.

Wu-Ti may have had trouble obtaining Turanian horses six hundred years earlier, but by this time the Eastern and Western Turkmen had come to realize that their horses were an excellent diplomatic tool. Turkistan had little else to give, and in truth, except for control of that part of the Silk Road, nothing else was wanted from this area. The T'ang Emperor Hsuan Tsung once remarked to a Turk envoy, "My country buys Turckic sheep and horses; Turks receive our country's silks. Both sides are abundantly supplied."

The Heavenly Horse in China

We do not know what kind of horse the Chinese had in the days of the Early Dynasties, but one thing is clear from their own histories: the Chinese considered their horses inferior to those of the "barbarians" around them.

They tried to obtain the horse we know today as the Mongolian Horse (or Mongolian Pony). Torday notes that: "It was the hardiness of the small Hsiung-nu horse which was covetted by the Chinese. So was its ability, unmatched by any Western breed, to find and get at grass buries by up to 18 inches of snow."

China placed great emphasis on raising horses for its cavalry, at one time setting aside enormous tracts of pasture for horses and large numbers of slaves to attend to them--as many as one per every ten horses.

Mythology was important as well, both to the Early Chinese and to the "barbarian" nomadic tribes around them. One continually comes across mention of famous (and sometimes fictional) "thousand li horses." A li, back then, is generally considered to have equalled approximately 1/3 of a mile. One story, nowadays considered apocryphal, in the ancient Shi Chi histories tells of Hsiung-nu king Mao-tun, who killed his father, Tuo-man, to gain the Hsiung-nu throne. Upon hearing this, many tribes subject to the Hsiung-nu sought advantage for themselves by asking Mao-tun to please grant them Tuo-man's famous horse "who could run 1,000 li in a day." This request Mao-tun granted, as well as a request for a Hsiung-nu princess; but when the barbarians asked for a plot of "useless" land, Mao-tun flew into a rage and wiped them out.