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 414 THE DECLINE AND FALL their idols weve burnt or broken ; tlie Musuhiian chief pro- nounced a sermon in the new mosch of Carizme ; after several battles, the Turkish hordes were driven back to the desert ; and the em])erors of China solicited the friendship of the victorious Arabs. To their industry the prosperity of the province, the Sogdiana of the ancients, may in a great measure be ascribed ; but the advantages of the soil and climate had been understood and cultivated since the reign of the Macedonian kings. Before the invasion of the Saracens, Carizme, Bochara, and Samarcand were rich and populous under the yoke of the shepherds of the north. ''^ These cities were surrounded with a double wall ; and 497 sqq. The expedition of the son of Ziyad against Bokharn. which Gibbon mentions, took place in the cahphate of Moawiya. In the same caliphate (a.d. 676) Sad (son of caliph Othman) seems to have advanced to Samarkand. See Weil, i. p. 291. Kutaiba's conquest of Transo.xiana occupied him for ten years, as there were continual revolts. The province of Bokhara was subjugated by 709 ; Samar- kand was taken and occupied with a garrison in 712; and the province of Farghana was annexed in 713. In 71 q Kutaiba was advancing or preparing to ad- vance to Kashghar : his ambassadors (it is said) were sent to treat with the " King of China," when the news of the caliph's death and fears for his own safety caused him to desist from further enterprises of conquest. Under Sulaiman, the suc- cessor of Walid, the territories of Jurjan and Tabaristan (.S. E. and 8. of the Caspian) were subdued. Carizme (or Khwarizm ■ = the Khanate of Khiva) seems to have been first occupied under Yezid (680-3) '< '^^^ afterwards reconquered by Kutaiba.] 51 [In Transoxiana there was a mixed population of Iranians and White Huns (Ephthalites), who had been subdued by the Turks (see above, vol. iv. 351), and still acknowledged the allegiance of the Chagan, but were under the immediate govern- ment of local princes (like the queen of Bokhara, the tarkhan of Sogdiana). At the time of Kutaiba's conquest, there was an insurrectionary movement in Transoxiana, of the poor against the rich. (Cp. Cahun, op. cit. p. 133-4.) The Saracen conquerors most skilfully took advantage of the two elements of disunion— the race hatred between Iran andTuran.andthe political faction ; and Kutaiba's conquest was due as much to intrigue as to force. It must also be observed that to the Nestorian Christians of Transoxiana, Islam (with its ancient history founded on the Jewish Scripture) was less obnoxious than fire-worship. The chief danger which Kutaiba had to fear was succour to the enemy from the Turks of Altai ; and a Turkish force actually came in 706 ; but he managed, by playing upon the credulity of the tarkhan of Sogdiana, to get rid of the formidable warriors without fighting a battle. The conquest of Farghana co'^t more blows than the conquest of Sogdiana. Here the Saracens came into contact with the Tibetan Buddhists, who had recently revolted against the Emperor of China. Bands of these Tibetan mountaineers crossed the great southern pass to plunder in the lands of the Oxus and Jaxartcs. They formed friendly relations with the Saracens, who in their turn reconnoitred in Kashgharia. It would have been a matter of great importance to the Saracens to hold the southern gate of China, and thus create and command a new route of commerce from east to west. But this would have taken away the occupation of the Turks, who had hitherto been the intermediates between China and Western Asia, holding the northern gate and hindering any one else from holding the southern. Accordingly the Turkish Chagan interfered, and forcibly recalled the Tibetans to their allegiance to the Emperor of China. The advance to Kashghar, which was internipted by the news of the caliph's death (see last note), was clearly intended to wrest from China its south-western provinces, in conjunction with the allies of Tibet. — Some years later (a.d. 724) another Turkish army was sent to