The Shatuo Turks actually lasted til 951. The Founder of the Later Jin Dynasty and the Later Han Dynasty were also Shatuo Turk. The Later Han Dynasty would maintain a rump state around Taiyuan until 979.
What if the Islamized Seljuk Turks migrate to China on masse instead of the middle east?
- Thread starter Kushim
- Start date
Okay so here's a potential road of plausibility then based on your suggestions:
-either due to ambition or wanting to distract his shrewd turkic army and sunni rivals from properly responding to his Ismai'lism conversion, Nasr II plans a campaign to secure the tarim basin for better access to trade (and one that could make any ambitious projects further east more easier to do)
-938 CE: Samanid troops successfully subdue the Ocho Kingdom and unlucky smaller cities and tribes in the warpath
-Nasr II also allies with the newly converted Khagan of the Qarakhanids and successfully convinces him to aid in the campaigns of north western China in exchange for territory there
-947 CE: the Liao incursions weaken the Late Jin dynasty and the Qarakhanids take advantage of this, they later go on to fight the Liao but the war ends in a stalemate and the two parties eventually agree to divide the former areas of the Late Jin.
-980 CE: due to infighting, the Samanids begin to weaken and the Qarakhanids smell blood, and begin to take its overstretched Chinese territories.
-1001-1005 CE: Muntasir attempts to restore the crumbling empire by attacking the Qarakhanids in the Tarim he enjoys some success but is eventually forced to pull back due to the arrival of the Oghuz turks to the north
Plausible so far?
I think including the Samanids is an unnecessary complication for several reasons. One is the shear distance. It is about 2,500km from Samarkand to Shanxi. That is similar to the distance the Caliphs were from the Maghreb except worse since no sea. Barely realistic. Realistically the Karakhanids will stay a rump vassal in Zhetysu, likely Kashgar is taken from them. You would then need a great conqueror Karakhanid to exploit that.
Much simpler to cut out the middleman. Kharakhanids were split between the sons of Satuq, who converted to Islam, after his death in 955. Eastern guy, Musa, made absolute mess of fighting Khotan. Western guy apparently did nothing much, but his son more or less overran the Saminids before being cut short by an illness. I think simplest think is to make one of Satuq’s sons a great conqueror type. Samanids still look strong at this point. He conquers Khotan, then the Uyghur Kingdom. Then the Yellow Head and Ganzhou Uyghurs. Then Guiyi and Lingu, Dingnan, and the Tanguts. There have been probably some clashes with the Khitan. Naimans and Kherids made vassals (far from Khitan center of gravity). But the Khitan have a unified Song China problem on their hands. 976-86 was a pretty high intense conflict period. Our conqueror allies with the Khitan against the Song. By the time the conqueror dies around 990, Shanxi and the Weihei valley are added. Result is sort of similar to the Western Xia except larger. Don't want to have *too* many Chinese, as want to be possible to be an elite without too much assimilation. For spreading Islam/Turkic we want a dynamic where the Tanguts, Ugyhurs, Mongols, etc assimilate in to the Karakhanids. Here is a map I made:
Much simpler to cut out the middleman. Kharakhanids were split between the sons of Satuq, who converted to Islam, after his death in 955. Eastern guy, Musa, made absolute mess of fighting Khotan. Western guy apparently did nothing much, but his son more or less overran the Saminids before being cut short by an illness. I think simplest think is to make one of Satuq’s sons a great conqueror type. Samanids still look strong at this point. He conquers Khotan, then the Uyghur Kingdom. Then the Yellow Head and Ganzhou Uyghurs. Then Guiyi and Lingu, Dingnan, and the Tanguts. There have been probably some clashes with the Khitan. Naimans and Kherids made vassals (far from Khitan center of gravity). But the Khitan have a unified Song China problem on their hands. 976-86 was a pretty high intense conflict period. Our conqueror allies with the Khitan against the Song. By the time the conqueror dies around 990, Shanxi and the Weihei valley are added. Result is sort of similar to the Western Xia except larger. Don't want to have *too* many Chinese, as want to be possible to be an elite without too much assimilation. For spreading Islam/Turkic we want a dynamic where the Tanguts, Ugyhurs, Mongols, etc assimilate in to the Karakhanids. Here is a map I made:
I think one thing that could happen is basically Sichuan being conquered by a kharakhanid conquerer, as Sichuan is traditionally a Chinese region that's rather isolated if you hold the correct passes. It'd be a perfect place to settle Turkish settlers and build a state there if they kill enough of original Chinese inhabitants and put in a bunch of Islamised Uyghurs.
Rather difficult to conquer the place. Especially with the rest of the empire at large. Sichuan is usually one of the last places in China to surrender to foreign invaders whether it be the Mongols or the Manchus. There were holdouts IOTL well after the Song Dynasty and Ming Dynasty has been extinguished.
That's true. I do think it's a possible place for them to stay a majority like how the Hungarians took over the Pannonian basin, and invasions always takes a bunch of luck and circumstance.
I rather doubt that they would settle the place en masse. Once they take over China, every last Turk is valuable manpower to keep the Chinese down. They would likely be spread around China as ‘knights’ ala sipahi/eight banners to keep the natives down.
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I still do think that China would probably have some regions that would get filled with Turks if they settle in for more than just one generation. tbf the Northern plain is prime grounds for settlement if they could afford to basically piss off one of the most densely populated regions in China. Hell, it may be doable if they do it a la Genghis khan in Khorasan. They'd basically be ruling over the ashes though, so it isn't the best course of action by a mile, but it'd cement Turkish pols in the region.
Samanids leading the charge is very unlikely.
I was more referring to them giving a few thousand Samanid professional soldiers to help in sieges and in being an elite force carrying complex maneuvers that the less disciplined nomads might be unable to carry out. Playing an assisting role.
But the karakhanids would be the overwhelming majority and push the charge. (Sedentary Samanids wouldn't be able to integrate/assimilate Uyghur, Naiman, Kerait, Tangut, Shatuo nomads to the same level as Qarakhanid)
The Samanids wouldn't have any direct control over Karakhanid China, but Qarakhanid China would draw heavily on the Samanid court, administration and culture in general.
But the Samanids would greatly benefit from the increased trade of the unfied and safer silk road. The improved economic conditions could potentially allow them to last longer.
The riches of China campaigns might draw a significant portion of the Samanid military eastwards in search of booty, somewhat like Ghaznavids in India. This would weaken the power of the Samanid military, perhaps allowing them to prevent their commanders from puppetizing them....?
Ideally, if Satuq pushes east soon after converting in 934, he might be able to take Shaanxi by the mid-late 950s. Meaning the Song haven't established themselves in the north China plain yet, which could potentially allow for a Qarakhanid conquest of the whole plain, thereby enabling a Qarakhanid China.
If they reach China after the early 960s, the most they could get is Shaanxi, but even that might be difficult to maintain....
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hmmm, I dunno about making a son a more ambitious, militarily intellectual type, aren't personality/skill changes considered ASB?
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I see, so the Qarakhanids request for soldiers from the Samanids in exchange for better silk road trade deals? maybe the deal could be further sweetened through a marriage perhaps? this would also mean that Satuq is more ambitious which again as you say is hard to discern as good info is hard to find
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I mean they could alleviate some of the issues of having to use every available Turk ala Janissary, they already got inspiration with how the Samanids and other Muslim states have been using slave soldiers
Janissaries are not cheap. They are unlikely to be able to spread across the entirety of China either. Everyone else used a mixture of land grants and slave soldiers.
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if the pod is a different son then no. bc being fertilised is like playing slots with the genes of humans.
The "Five Kingdoms and Ten Dynasties" Period (907-979 CE) was a period of political unrest in China, when there wasn't any real centralised rule. During this time, would it be possible/likely for Muslim Turks to start conquering China piecemeal, state-by-state? That way, the Turks might establish themselves as the reunifiers of China rather than the usurpers/conquerors of the Tang.
It's possible. That's all I could say. Even the Khitans could have if they had a little more luck and stuck to their guns IOTL after capturing the Later Jin Emperor.
I see, but can it be further specified that this new child is a military genius?
I mean then it's more focused on the specifics of the TL, which I think should be something the author determines.
I'm attaching a scenario I created, in which the Mughal Empire arose in China rather than India. Butterflies abound, but that was part of the fun of writing it. Anyway, let me know what y'all think: