Asia History

According to Countryaah.com, Asia consists of 48 countries, of which two (Turkey and Russia) are also located in Europe.

Early nomad empires

Asia Early nomad empires

An early nomadic empire, Xiongnu – probably Turkish-speaking – reached its greatest extent during Mao Tun 209-174 BC. It included, at its highest, Central Asia from Manchuria in the east to northeastern Turkestan in the west and appears as a well-organized state that entered diplomatic contact with the Chinese Empire. Ca. 50 BC Xiongnu had played his political role. However, the wall and nomadic realms did not cut off relations between China and the rest of the world. The connection to xiongnu opened to the Chinese contacts to the west, and it is in these centuries that the Silk Road can first be seen that connected China with the Middle East, India and Europe.

After 300 AD launched a major wave of attacks by the steppe nomads against the agricultural cultures of the east, south and west. The reason for this wave of attacks is unknown, as the earliest written testimonies of the nomadic people themselves are first found with the Turkish Orkhon inscriptions of the 730s, so that only the nomads are known through European, Chinese and Middle Eastern sources. It is possible that the natural population growth among the nomads was so great that the steppe land in the long run was not enough for the growing population and its herds. However, there is no doubt that the nomads did not come as disorganized robberies. The formation of larger nomadic states such as Xiongnu shows that there was an early tradition of state formation that united a large number of tribes and clans under a strong leader and central leadership.

In the period approx. 220-589 AD the whole of northern and western China was dominated by a number of nomadic dynasties, which were soon influenced by Chinese culture, as has so often been the case for nomadic conquerors in agricultural cultures, but who also left deep traces in Chinese culture. It is likely that the nomadic attacks in the 400- and 500-t. aimed at the countries of the west and south (the females, the avars, the Heftalites) were part of the same expansion wave that hit China. Persia was the area that, by virtue of its armored equestrian, proved best able to repel the nomadic attacks, all the way to 500-t. thus, India was also protected, which during the Guptad dynasty (320-c. 570) experienced its cultural golden age.

The attacks had a devastating effect on the vulnerable agricultural cultures, but the nomadic rule also opened up the possibility of closer contacts between the different Asian cultures. The caravan roads were kept open not only to the merchants and their goods, but also to cultural currents such as Buddhism, which originated in its home country, India, in 300-500-t. along the Silk Road through Central Asia reached China, where the new faith in the form of mahayana gained widespread use.

While India after the nomadic attack in the 500-t. went into a long split period, occurred in the 500- and 600-h. crucial events in China and the Middle East that, for centuries, ensured political stability.

China rallied during the short-lived South Dynasty (581-618), and this was followed by the Tang Dynasty (618-907). The unity was strengthened through support for Buddhism in a form adapted to Chinese cultural traditions and through a canal construction that linked the rivers Huang He and Chang Jiang to one another. It was also during these centuries that Korea, Japan and northern Vietnam became involved in the Chinese cultural circle – first with the Buddhist mission, then with the imitation of Chinese writing and Chinese political institutions. In the west, the Tang Dynasty resumed its expansionary policy, and the oases along the Silk Road were brought under Chinese military control again.

China Tang Dynasty

During the Tang Dynasty, administrative practices and the recruitment of officials through classics were established, which up to the present day has ensured the continuity of the Chinese realm, despite all political upheavals. As the fertility of the Chang Jiang Valley could be fully exploited through extensive water-building work, the economic and political center of gravity moved to the south. This shift to the south continued during the Song Dynasty (960-1279), which in 1127 after the loss of northern China to a nomadic kingdom from the north increasingly concentrated its efforts on internal development and on contacts to the south and west over the sea.

In the Middle East became the pivotal turning point of Islam’s conquest and spread after Muhammad’s death in 632. The Sasani Empire, which had so long resisted nomadic attacks and in the battles against the Roman and Byzantine empires, collapsed in a few years against the Islamic attacks. In India, the first Islamic attacks gained only superficial meaning; By contrast, West Turkestan – the area that now forms the Central Asian republics east of the Caspian Sea – was soon implicated by Islam. This expansion brought Islam into contact with the outer Chinese outposts to the west. In 751, a Chinese army force suffered a defeat of Islamic troops at Talas. The battle was not of significant military importance, but maintaining the dominion of the far western outposts in the long run made great demands on the resources of the Chinese kingdom. From the end of the 700-t.

To a large extent, the Islamic expansion brought an end to the cultural diversity that had characterized the Middle East based on Abbreviationfinder. Throughout the centuries, Islam became the most dominant religion and Arabic became the most widely used written and spoken language, while Persian retained its high status as both administrative and literary.

Asian Countries