The Aru-Kagan (Chinese Helu) of the Eastern Turkic Kaganate is captured in 630 by the Chinese.

His heir apparent, the "lesser Khan" Khubo, escapes to Altai with a major part of the people and thirty thousand soldiers.

He conquers the Karluks—a branch of the Turgesh or aboriginal Altaians—in the west and the Kyrgyz in the north, and takes the title Ichju Chebi Khan.

Upper East Asia (CE 820 – 963): Tibetan Realignments, Tang Decline, and Steppe Frontiers

Geographic and Environmental Context

Upper East Asia includes Mongolia and western China, encompassing Tibet, Xinjiang, Qinghai, Gansu, Ningxia, Inner Mongolia, and western Heilongjiang.

• The subregion spans the Tibetan Plateau, the Gobi Desert, the Altai Mountains, and arid basins such as the Tarim and Hexi Corridor.

• It served as a strategic crossroads between the Chinese heartland, Central Asia, and the northern steppe.

---

Climate and Environmental Shifts

• A continental and high-altitude climate prevailed, with long winters, short summers, and limited rainfall.

• Oases and river valleys enabled farming in Xinjiang and Gansu, while the plateau and steppe supported pastoralism.

• Periodic droughts and shifting steppe conditions influenced nomadic migrations and political pressures on neighbors.

---

Societies and Political Developments

• The Tibetan Empire, dominant in the 7th–8th centuries, fragmented by the mid-9th, with regional warlords and monastic centers filling the vacuum.

• In Mongolia and the northern steppes, Turkic and Mongolic tribes organized into shifting confederations after the fall of the Uyghur Khaganate (840).

• The Tang Dynasty of China (618–907) gradually weakened, losing firm control of the western regions; local warlords and military governors filled the gap.

• By the 10th century, post-Tang successor states and regional powers such as the Khotan Kingdom and Gansu Uyghurs controlled key Silk Road oases.

• In the Hexi Corridor, fortified towns became contested points among Chinese, Tibetan, and steppe powers.

---

Economy and Trade

• Oasis agriculture (wheat, barley, grapes, cotton) supported dense populations in Tarim Basin towns like Khotan and Turfan.

• Tibetan highlands relied on barley cultivation, yak herding, and salt extraction.

• Steppe societies raised horses, sheep, and camels, trading livestock and animal products southward.

• Silk Road caravans carried silk, jade, and porcelain westward, returning with silver, glass, and horses.

• Tribute systems linked frontier states with Tang China and later successor dynasties.

---

Subsistence and Technology

• Irrigation canals and qanats sustained desert oases.

• Mounted cavalry with composite bows dominated warfare across steppes and frontiers.

• Tibetan Buddhism advanced, with monasteries becoming centers of literacy and landholding.

• Chinese gunpowder experimentation and woodblock printing began in this broader era, though concentrated in the east.

---

Movement and Interaction Corridors

• The Silk Road through the Tarim Basin and Hexi Corridor remained the main artery between China and Central Asia.

• Tibetan passes linked the plateau with Nepal, India, and Inner Asia.

• Steppe routes connected Mongolia to the Caspian steppes and Manchuria.

• The Gansu corridor tied northern Chinese states to frontier polities.

---

Belief and Symbolism

• Buddhism flourished in Tibet and Tarim Basin states, with monumental cave complexes at Dunhuang and Kizil.

• Manichaeism and Nestorian Christianity persisted among Uyghur groups.

• Indigenous shamanic and sky-god traditions remained central to steppe societies.

• Ritual art, manuscripts, and religious iconography blended Indian, Persian, and Chinese influences.

---

Adaptation and Resilience

• Nomadic mobility enabled steppe groups to survive drought and resource scarcity.

• Oasis towns fortified their walls and stockpiles to endure sieges and shifting power struggles.

• Tibetan plateau communities relied on barley, yaks, and salt as ecological stabilizers.

• Trade diversification reduced dependence on any single route or crop.

---

Long-Term Significance

By 963, Upper East Asia was a mosaic of fragmented powers: Tibet in disunity, Tang China collapsing, Uyghur refugees adapting, and oasis states thriving on trade. Its cultural and political dynamism foreshadowed new steppe empires and Buddhist renaissances in the centuries ahead.

Tang dependence upon their northern allies is apparently a source of embarrassment to the Chinese, who surreptitiously encourage the Kyrgyz and the Karluks to attack the Uyghurs, driving them south into the Tarim Basin.

As a result of the Kyrgyz action, the Uyghur empire collapses in 846.

Some of the Uighurs emigrate to Chinese Turkestan (the Turpan region), where they establish a flourishing kingdom that will freely submit to Genghis Khan several centuries later.

Ironically, this weakening of the Uighurs undoubtedly hastens the decline and fall of the Tang Dynasty over the next fifty years.

The power of the Uyghur Khaganate had declined after the death of Tun Bagha Tarkhan death in 789, and the empire had begun to fragment.

The Tibetans had taken the area of Beshbalik, and the Karluks had captured Fu-tu valley.

The khagan bearing the title Qutlugh Bilge had died in 795, ending the Yaghlakar dynasty.

A general named had Qutlugh declared himself the new khagan, under the title Tängridä ülüg bulmïsh alp kutlugh ulugh bilgä kaghan ("Greatly born in moon heaven, victorious, glorious, great and wise Kaghan"), founding a new dynasty, the Ediz.

The Khaganate, with solid leadership once more, had averted collapse.

Qutlugh became renowned for his leadership and management of the empire but, while he consolidated the empire, he failed to restore its previous power.

The empire on his death in 808 had once again begun to fragment.

Qutlugh was succeeded by his son, who had gone on to improve trade in inner Asia.

The name of the last great khagan of the Empire is unknown, though he bore the title Kün tengride ülüg bulmïsh alp küchlüg bilge ("Greatly born in sun heaven, victorious, strong and wise").

His achievements included improved trade up with the region of Sogdiana, and on the battlefield in 821 he repulsed a force of invading Tibetans.

This khagan, who died in 824, had been succeeded by a brother, Qasar, whose murder in 832 had inaugurated a period of anarchy.

The legitimate khagan had been forced in 839 to commit suicide, and a usurping minister named Kürebir had seized the throne with the help of twenty thousand horsemen of Shato from Ordos.

A famine and an epidemic in the same year, coupled with a particularly severe winter that killed much of the livestock, had devastated the Uyghur economy.

One of nine Uyghur ministers, Kulug Bagha, rival of Kurebir, flees in the following spring, in 840, to the Kyrgyz tribe and invites them to invade from the north.

The Kyrgyz, with a force of around eighty thousand horsemen, sack the Uyghur capital at Ordu-Baliq, razing it to the ground, and capture the Uyghur Khagan, Kürebir (Hesa), who they promptly behead.

They go on to destroy other cities throughout the Uyghur Khaganate, burning them to the ground.

The center of the Yenesei Kyrgyz nation moves to Jeti-su (meaning "seven rivers, a historical name of a part of Central Asia, corresponding to the southeastern part of modern Kazakhstan.

It owes its name, meaning "seven rivers" (literally "seven waters") in Kazakh and Persian, to the rivers which flow from the south-east into Lake Balkhash.

The rise to power will brings about a spread south of the Yenesei Kyrgyz people to reach the Tian Shan and Xinjiang, bringing them into contact with the existing peoples of western China, especially Tibet.

Upper East Asia (964 – 1107 CE): 

Tangut Western Xia, Tibetan Phyi dar, and Steppe–Silk Road Crossroads

Geographic and Environmental Context

Upper East Asia comprises Mongolia, Tibet, and the western highlands of China (Xinjiang, Qinghai, Gansu, Ningxia, NW Sichuan). Landscapes range from Mongolian steppe and Gobi margins to the Tibetan Plateau and Hexi Corridor oases. Key nodes: Tarim/Turfan oases, Gansu–Ningxia irrigated towns, Qinghai/Amdo pastures, and Khams passes.

Climate and Environmental Shifts

The Medieval Warm Period modestly lengthened grazing seasons and improved barley yields in Tibetan valleys. Precipitation remained variable on the steppe; multi-year droughts strained herds and shaped diplomacy. Oases prospered on steady meltwater but faced dune encroachment and salinization—managed through constant irrigation upkeep.

Societies and Political Developments

• Tangut Western Xia (1038–1227): Mi-nyag clans consolidated the Hexi Corridor, founded the Western Xia monarchy (1038), fortified frontiers, taxed caravans, and contested borders with Northern Song and Khitan Liao.

• Oasis & Uyghur polities: Khotan fell to the Kara-Khanids (1006), accelerating Islamization in the southern Tarim; the Uyghur Kingdom of Qocho (Turfan) and Ganzhou Uyghurs remained Buddhist, sustaining manuscript culture and caravan services.

• Tibet (phyi dar, “Later Diffusion”): Post-imperial principalities backed a Buddhist renaissance—Guge and Purang patronized translation and temple building (e.g., Rinchen Zangpo; Atiśa’s arrival in 1042 spurred scholastic reform like Kadam). In Amdo/Qinghai and Khams, Tibetan and Qiangic groups balanced monastery estates with mixed pastoral–agrarian lifeways.

• Mongolia & the Eastern Steppe: No single hegemon; Kereit, Naiman, Merkit, and allied confederations engaged in horse-trade diplomacy with Song, Liao, and Western Xia.

Economy and Trade

• Caravan systems moved silk, tea, paper, porcelain, and copper cash westward; returning were horses, wool, falcons, silver, ambergris, and Islamic glass.

• Hexi tolls and forts under Western Xia monetized and secured routes.

• Tea–horse trade linked Song with Tibet/Amdo and Western Xia.

• Khotan–Kashgar reoriented toward Islamic markets; Qocho remained a Buddhist entrepôt mediating mixed networks.

Subsistence and Technology

• Pastoralism: mobile camps, composite bows, lamellar armor, and remount strings defined steppe warfare; diversified herds (horses, sheep, goats, camels, yaks) spread risk.

• Tibetan valleys: barley/buckwheat terraces, yak traction, monastery granaries, and salt trade.

• Oases: qanat/karez galleries, dams, trellised orchards (apricot, mulberry, pomegranate), and Buddhist woodblock printing (Turfan–Dunhuang).

• Frontier fortifications: Western Xia built rammed-earth walls, beacons, and river forts along caravan lanes and pastures.

Movement and Interaction Corridors

• Northern/Southern Silk Roads skirted the Taklamakan, converging through Hexi toward Song markets.

• Plateau passes (Tsang–Ngari–Purang; Qinghai Lake routes) tied Tibet to Nepal, Ladakh, and Sichuan.

• Steppe corridors linked Mongolian confederations with Liao, Western Xia, and Song horse brokers.

Belief and Symbolism

• Tibet: Buddhist phyi dar translated scriptures, built monasteries, and formed scholastic lineages; Bon persisted and hybridized locally.

• Western Xia: state Buddhism and Tangut script underpinned royal legitimacy; steles, cave shrines, and monasteries proclaimed sovereignty.

• Oases: plural religious landscape—Buddhist caves (Dunhuang), Manichaean/Nestorian enclaves among Uyghurs, and post-1006 Islamic institutions in the western Tarim.

• Steppe: sky cults, ancestor rites, and divination legitimated chieftaincy and bound camps to landscape.

Adaptation and Resilience

Pastoral mobility absorbed climate shocks; intermarriage and tribute balanced inter-tribal relations. Western Xia combined taxation with convoy protection, securing revenue without stifling flows. Tibetan monasteries acted as grain banks, schools, and diplomatic nodes; oasis irrigation and merchant diasporas kept supply chains running despite wars.

Long-Term Significance

By 1107, Upper East Asia cohered around three durable frontiers:

1. Western Xia commanding Hexi and the Ordos rim;

2. a Tibetan Buddhist renaissance radiating from Guge and Amdo/Khams;

3. Mongolian confederations refining cavalry economies ahead of 12th-century realignments.
   Xinjiang’s religious map tilted toward Islam while Qocho and Dunhuang sustained Buddhist manuscript cultures—an institutional mix that set the stage for Jin expansion, Western Xia’s apogee, and ultimately the Mongol transformations of the 13th century.

The Kyrgyz remain under the Golden Horde and its successors for the next few hundred years, regaining freedom in 1510.

Many of the Torghut, the westernmost of the Oirat Mongols, have meanwhile begin to migrate westward in approximately 1620.

Possibly the movement is a reaction to the growing dominance of the Dzungar Mongols, an Oirat subclan and neighbors of the Torgut to the south.

In any event, the Torghut fight their way through Kyrgyz and Kazakh territory, to cross the Embe River.

Becoming better known as the Kalmyk tribe, they subsequently settle in the Trans-Volga steppe and raid Russian settlements on both sides of the river.

Finally submitting to Russia in 1646, they maintain  autonomy under their own khan.

They become an excellent source of light cavalry for the Russians, who will later use them in campaigns against the Crimean Tatars and in Inner Asia.

Galdan Khan of the Dzungar attempts a new effort toward Mongol unity later in the seventeenth century.

He has conquered most of Kashgar, Yarkand, and Khotan (Hotan) from the Kyrgyyz, and he expands into Kazakh territory.

In about 1682, intending to conquer the Khalkha, he had turned eastward.

In 1688 the hard-pressed Khalkha appeal to the Manchus for aid.

The Manchus are more than pleased to respond, and a Chinese-Manchu army marches to help.

A development that further integrates the Mongols into the Manchu apparatus is the Manchus' adoption of the Mongol banner system, which combines administrative and military functions.