Did one battle in 751 carry papermaking to the West?
TL;DR — No. Tang and Abbasid armies fought at Talas in July 751, but Central Asia used paper by the 300s, and the prisoner story first appears centuries later.
No single battle carried papermaking to the West. A Tang army under Gao Xianzhi lost to an Abbasid force under Ziyad ibn Salih on the Talas River in July 751, and Chinese soldiers were taken prisoner. The story that captured papermakers then founded Samarkand’s paper industry was first written down about four centuries later, and letters found near Dunhuang show Central Asian merchants writing on paper by the early 300s. The art historian Jonathan Bloom set out that evidence in Paper Before Print in 2001. Paper did move west through Samarkand and Baghdad after 751, on a road open for centuries.
Quick facts
- When
- July 751 (battle) · 755 An Lushan's rebellion · 762 Du Huan's return · about 794 paper reported at Baghdad · Ancient Letters written about 312–313 (or later, per one paper analysis)
- Where
- Atlakh near Taraz on the Talas River, in what is now Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan; Samarkand; Baghdad
- Who
- Gao Xianzhi (Tang) and Ziyad ibn Salih (Abbasid); the Karluk Turks; the prisoner Du Huan; art historian Jonathan Bloom; H. A. R. Gibb; Nicholas Sims-Williams
- Outcome
- A Tang defeat after the Karluks changed sides; Tang power in the west ended with the rebellion of 755, not the battle; the papermaker-prisoner story is a later tale, since paper was in use in Central Asia by the 300s
Who met at Talas, and why
The fighting grew out of a quarrel over Tashkent, then called Shash, beyond the Syr Darya in what is now Uzbekistan. H. A. R. Gibb, in his 1923 study The Arab Conquests in Central Asia, wrote that the king of Ferghana called in Gao Xianzhi, the Tang governor at Kucha, against the king of Shash. Gibb described Gao as a Korean officer in Tang service. According to the Chinese histories as Gibb summarized them, Gao came to terms with the king of Shash, then broke his word on some pretext and seized the city. The heir fled to Sogdiana and persuaded Abu Muslim, the Abbasid governor in the east, to intervene, and Ziyad ibn Salih led the force sent against the Chinese. C. Edmund Bosworth, writing for Encyclopaedia Iranica in 1990, put it from the Arab side: the Tang claimed suzerainty over Central Asia and had answered appeals from threatened Sogdian princes.
What happened in July 751
The armies met at Atlakh, near Taraz on the Talas River, in what is now the border country of Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan. Gibb dated the battle to July 751. The Tang fought alongside troops from Ferghana and a body of Karluk Turks. During the engagement, Gibb wrote, the Karluks deserted, and Gao, caught between them and the Arabs, suffered a crushing defeat.
Gibb found no mention of the battle in al-Tabari or the other early Arabic historians, only a short notice in Ibn al-Athir’s thirteenth-century chronicle, so the detailed account rests on the Chinese histories. Victoria Almonte of Tuscia University, in a 2024 chapter on the prisoner Du Huan, wrote that no one on either side described the battle precisely. Estimates of the two armies run from tens of thousands to more than 100,000 men, depending on the tradition followed, and no figure is settled.
What the battle changed, and what it did not
Bosworth wrote that only after 751 was Arab rule beyond the Oxus free from challenge, and that the Chinese retreated permanently behind the Tien Shan. Gibb was careful about the cause. The battle ended Chinese power in the west, he wrote, “in consequence of internal disruption rather than external pressure.”
The disruption came in 755, when the frontier general An Lushan rebelled. John D. Szostak’s essay for the University of Washington’s Silk Road Seattle project records that the decline of Tang power in Central Asia is commonly dated to 751, then describes what followed: An Lushan’s 150,000 frontier troops took the northeast, the rebellion took eight years to crush, and the empire never fully recovered. Gibb placed the true blow in 757, when Central Asian contingents helped restore the emperor to his capital and saw the empire’s weakness for themselves.
The paper story and where it comes from
Dorothy Field, writing in Hand Papermaking in 2014, summarized the tale as most people know it: Chinese papermakers captured after Talas, Samarkand becoming a papermaking center, and the craft spreading from there to the Middle East, North Africa and Europe. Bloom, writing in the same magazine in 2012, described the story as one that “an Arab author first recounted some four centuries after the supposed event.” He read it as a way of saying that paper came ultimately from China, like the Chinese tradition that credits Cai Lun with inventing paper in AD 105.
One Tang prisoner did leave a record. Du Huan, a soldier captured at Talas, returned by merchant ship to Guangzhou in 762, according to a note by his kinsman Du You. His travel account, the Jingxing ji, survives only in fragments that Du You copied into his encyclopedia, the Tongdian, compiled in 801. The fragment on the Arab lands, as Almonte prints it, records Chinese craftsmen at work there and names two painters and two weavers, alongside silk looms and gold- and silversmiths. Whether papermakers were among the captives is disputed, and the fragment settles nothing on that point.
What the paper evidence shows
The strongest evidence against the tale is physical. In 1907 Aurel Stein found five nearly complete letters, plus fragments, written in Sogdian on paper in a ruined watchtower west of Dunhuang. Nicholas Sims-Williams of the School of Oriental and African Studies, who edited them, wrote that W. B. Henning’s dating of the letters to 312 or 313, from their report of the sack of Luoyang, has been generally accepted, and that A. Fujieda’s analysis of the paper put it no earlier than the sixth century. On either date, merchants writing to Samarkand were using paper at least 200 years before the battle.
Willem Floor’s 2005 survey for Encyclopaedia Iranica summarized Bloom’s case: papermaking was practiced in Central Asia, including Samarkand, before 751, and Chinese paper was made from bast fibers while early Persian paper was made mostly from rags. Floor added that Bloom did not entirely discount a role for Chinese captives, since the spread of papermaking from Samarkand into the Islamic lands is documented only for the period after Talas. The captives, in this reading, joined a craft that already existed.
How paper actually traveled west
Persians were importing Chinese paper by about 650, Floor wrote, though it was rare enough to be kept for state documents. After 750 the Abbasid bureaucracy needed writing material in quantity, and Bloom wrote that paper was reported at Baghdad within a few decades. The Robert C. Williams Museum of Papermaking at Georgia Tech dates the first water-powered mill there to 794 and traces the route onward to Damascus, Cairo and al-Andalus. By the end of the tenth century, Floor wrote, Samarkand paper and rag paper made elsewhere had replaced papyrus and parchment in the Islamic lands, and the tenth-century geography Hudud al-Alam recorded that Samarkand exported paper “all over the world.” Bloom placed papermaking in al-Andalus by 1000 and at Fabriano in Italy by the thirteenth century.
The battle was real, and so was the paper that followed the caliphate west. What the evidence removes is the single moment of transfer. The prisoners of Talas, whatever their trades, arrived in a country that already knew how to make paper.
Key facts
- The battle was fought at Atlakh near Taraz on the Talas River in July 751, between a Tang army under Gao Xianzhi and an Abbasid force under Ziyad ibn Salih (Gibb, 1923).
- The Karluk Turks deserted the Tang side during the engagement, and the Tang army was routed (Gibb; Bosworth).
- Gibb found no account of the battle in the early Arabic historians; the detailed record comes from the Chinese histories, and army sizes are unsettled.
- An Lushan’s rebellion of 755–763, not the battle, ended Tang power in Central Asia, per Gibb and the Silk Road Seattle essay.
- The Tang prisoner Du Huan returned to Guangzhou by ship in 762; fragments of his Jingxing ji in the Tongdian name Chinese painters and weavers in the Arab lands.
- The Sogdian Ancient Letters, found by Aurel Stein in 1907, are paper documents dated to 312–313 by Henning; Fujieda’s paper analysis argues for the 500s.
- Paper was reported at Baghdad within decades of 750, with a water-powered mill dated to 794; by about 1000 Samarkand paper had replaced papyrus and parchment in the Islamic lands.
FAQ
Who won the Battle of Talas?
The Abbasid force under Ziyad ibn Salih, after the Karluk Turks abandoned the Tang side during the battle. Gao Xianzhi survived the defeat; Almonte gives his death as 756. Bosworth wrote that Arab rule beyond the Oxus was free from challenge only after 751.
Did the Battle of Talas bring paper to the Islamic world?
The story of captured papermakers was first written down about four centuries after the battle, according to Bloom. Sogdian letters on paper from about 313 show that Central Asia used paper long before 751. Papermaking did spread from Samarkand into the Islamic lands after the battle, but it was already practiced there.
Why did the Tang leave Central Asia after 751?
Because of An Lushan's rebellion in 755, which took eight years to suppress and drew the frontier armies home. Gibb wrote that the loss of Chinese power in the west followed internal disruption rather than the defeat at Talas.
Sources
- H. A. R. Gibb — The Arab Conquests in Central Asia (Royal Asiatic Society, 1923), chapter on the Abbasid conquest, via Project Gutenberg.
- Encyclopaedia Iranica — C. Edmund Bosworth, "Central Asia iv. In the Islamic Period up to the Mongols" (1990).
- Encyclopaedia Iranica — Willem Floor, "Paper ii. Paper and Papermaking" (2005).
- Encyclopaedia Iranica — Nicholas Sims-Williams, "Ancient Letters" (1985, updated 2018).
- Silk Road Seattle, University of Washington — John D. Szostak, "The Tang Dynasty."
- Silk Road Seattle, University of Washington — "The Sogdian Ancient Letters," translated by Nicholas Sims-Williams, introduction by Daniel C. Waugh (2004).
- Hand Papermaking magazine — Jonathan M. Bloom, "Paper in the Islamic Lands," vol. 27 no. 2 (Winter 2012).
- Hand Papermaking magazine — Dorothy Field, "Papermaking on the Silk Road: Samarkand and Beyond," vol. 29 no. 1 (Summer 2014).
- Victoria Almonte — "Du Huan's Perception of the Ecumene in the 8th Century," in Navigating the Mediterranean Through the Chinese Lens (Firenze University Press, 2024), PDF.
- World History Encyclopedia — Batuhan Aksu, review of Jonathan M. Bloom, Paper Before Print: The History and Impact of Paper in the Islamic World (November 14, 2024).
- Robert C. Williams Museum of Papermaking, Georgia Tech — "History of Papermaking Around the World," PDF.
Cite this article
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- Our Earth's History. (2026, September 20). Did one battle in 751 carry papermaking to the West? Our Earth's History. https://ourearthshistory.com/central-asia/medieval/battle-of-talas-751-paper-legend/
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