"Good news, good news, there is news from Dongdu that after the Ghost Festival, His Highness will be able to return home." The girl jumped in and shouted: However, Madam Zheng's eyes changed as she was reviewing the lesson plan. De lamented and said, "The Hungry Ghost Festival is coming soon, it's been eleven years."
As a day to miss loved ones during every festive season, the Hungry Ghost Festival, also known as the Mid-Autumn Festival, is the day for family reunions, worshiping the moon and praying for blessings; but for her, after nine years of being cautious and unremarkable in court, , the second Hungry Ghost Festival ushered in a change, which seems to be unique.
Not only because she has made up her mind to cut off contact with her eldest brother and her family; but also because on this special day, there will be a raccoon fairy who transcends the long river of time to accompany their mother and daughter; this is How lucky and rare it is!
Along with the news of the imminent return of Prince Li Hong, there was also a copy of the latest version of "Living Parts" specially sent from Dongdu. Apparently, Prince Li Hong learned of the news of Jiang Tian's return and specially ordered someone to join him. Sent back urgently to provide real-time updates on recent days.
The first is the incident at the end of last year when the last Persian prince Belus came to court. Belus can also be regarded as a legendary figure in history. He was the last monarch of the Sassanid Dynasty of Persia, the third son of Yazdgeld III (Yisiqi), and the only remaining bloodline. .
As the last Shahan Shah (King of Kings), Yi Siqi is also a typical unlucky poor man. In the two years before he succeeded to the throne, with the death of Khosrau II, the last male lord of the Sasanian dynasty, there was civil strife between his two daughters Puran and Amit, and twelve consecutive monarchs were replaced.
The result was that the royal family and the nobility, large and small, withered away in internecine fighting. By the time Yi Siqi, the only remaining member of the royal family, was elected according to the order of succession, he was already helpless. The Persian capitals of Ctesiphon and Seleucia have been devoured by the Great Eclipse, and the remaining armies have been defeated in repeated battles.
Yi Siqi could only take the royal family and palace personnel to retreat eastward, and fled to Mulu, the eastern border of Iran. Here, relying on the support of the remaining subjects, a small court was established that only existed for seven years; then it ushered in the vassal coalition of former Persian princes and nobles who had converted to the Dashi Tianfang Sect.
In the autumn of 651 AD, the remnant Persian army led by Yi Siqi was defeated on the Amu Darya River. After Yi Siqi, who returned to the city of Merv, was assassinated by the rebels, the Sasanian dynasty perished. However, during his escape, he sent an envoy to ask for help from Emperor Taizong of the Tang Dynasty. As an envoy, Belus was spared.
Therefore, he and his surviving brother Arohan gathered the scattered Sasanian survivors and retreated to Tochar (Northern Afghanistan) to continue the resistance. At the same time, he was also canonized by the Tang Dynasty as the first and last governor of the Persian Governor's Palace. But it was his eldest brother Aluohan whose experience was even more legendary.
Aluohan, also known as "Wahlan", "Abraham", "Bahram", etc., is a hero with great magical powers in ancient legends. In the Zoroastrian classic "Zander Vahlan Yesen", a hero named Vahlan will be born at the end of the millennium to help the savior Uhidar.
While living in Tochara, he gave up the throne of Persia to his younger brother Belus, and went to Hajj as the great chief of Persia. He was appointed by Emperor Gaozong as the right envoy general, and then served as the consoling ambassador to the vassals of Fulin Kingdom (Eastern Roman Empire), and was ordered to go to the Eastern Roman Empire.
Its purpose is to unite Eastern Rome to jointly fight against the rising Abbasid Dynasty/Black Era. Therefore, Aluohan traveled westward along the northern road recorded in Pei Ju's "Illustrated Records of the Western Regions" of the Sui Dynasty; it took several years to reach the Eastern Roman Empire; and met the contemporary Constantine II.
At this time, it was during the period when the Eastern Roman capital was moving to the Italian Peninsula. As the son of Constantine the Great, Constantine II had just obtained the throne from the split and civil war with his brothers who co-ruled the empire. Therefore, he had no intention of looking east; instead, he The Abbasids secretly negotiated some kind of temporary peace.
Therefore, Aluohan could only return without success. As a diplomatic envoy, the greatest achievement was that as an envoy to the Eastern Tang Dynasty, he witnessed the re-division of the Eastern and Western Roman Empires. Therefore, after he returned from the sea with the Da Qin envoy, he lived in seclusion in the Persian house in Xiu Shanfang.
In contrast, Belus, who was in Tochara, received support and protection from the local tribal chiefs (Dayuezhi Governorate), and continued to recruit and absorb Persian survivors who did not want to be ruled by Dashi, and persisted in fighting for many years. For a long time, they once counterattacked back into Tochara and were defeated again.
Compared with another legendary figure of the same era, the last royal member of the Umayyad Dynasty who was also hunted all the way successfully escaped to North Africa and used it as a springboard to conquer the remaining people of the Iberian Peninsula and establish the Cordoba Dynasty. Rahman, the eagle of Quraysh, is undoubtedly tragic.
It can be said that he has been fighting for the restoration of Persia all his life. Although he has been defeated and defeated repeatedly under the pursuit of the black-clothed food and his vassals, he has always been indomitable and escaped again and again. came back; in the end, he could only retreat all the way eastward to the land in the river.
There are only thousands of followers left around him; therefore, coming here to seek foreign aid for the restoration of the country is also his last effort. Thirty years of chasing, fighting and escaping turned him from a royal boy of fifteen or sixteen to an old man with frosty white hair prematurely; he also exhausted his energy.
Therefore, two years after entering the Tang Dynasty, he died in the Persian Fanfang in Luoyang and was buried on Beiman Mountain in Luoyang. A few years later, his son Wangsun Ninieshi came of age and returned to the land of the river with his tribe to participate in the local resistance. The war in Dashi lasted until the Jinglong period of Zhongzong (709).
Then, after the last local resistance stronghold collapsed, he re-entered the court and was awarded the title of General Zuoweiwei. In the end, he died of illness in Chang'an and was lost in the annals of history. It can be said that the story of this family's lifelong struggle to restore the country is much more inspiring than the Murong Fu and others of Beiyan.
His descendants stayed in Central Asia and were still regarded as the king of Persia by the Tang Dynasty. According to records in "Cefu Yuangui", during the Kaiyuan and Tianbao years of Emperor Xuanzong of the Tang Dynasty, the "King of Persia" continued to send envoys to the court. In the fifth year of Tianbao (746), his king Hulu Khan sent envoys to the dynasty and was granted the title of King of Return.
He once presented "thousand-year dates (Persian dates, namely date palms)" to the Tang Dynasty. According to historical records, "There is also Tuobasdan (freely translated as "mountain land"), or Tuobasadang. Its country is blocked by mountains on three sides and is bordered by a small sea in the north. He lived in the city of Po (should be "Sao") and was a general in the east of Persia. .Persia is destroyed and refuses to surrender."
However, in this time and space, the trajectory of history seems to have only a slight deviation; according to normal historical development, it will have to wait at least four years later, the first year of Tiaolu (679). Pei Xingjian, the minister of the Ministry of Personnel, was sent by Emperor Gaozong of the Tang Dynasty to lead his troops to escort the Ni Ni division back to the country and rebuild the Persian governor's palace.
However, when escorted to Suiye City in Anxi, he stopped moving forward due to the commotion of the Tang army soldiers, so he could only lead his troops back to Tocharo alone. In order to give an account to the court, Pei Xingjian made a surprise attack and captured alive Ashina Duzhi, the ten-surnamed Khan of the Western Turks, and Tutun Li Zhebei, the superintendent of Tutun who was close to Tubo.
But in this time and space, this fake Dao-style battle against Guo seems to have happened in advance; because at the court meeting half a month ago, Honglu Shaoqing Cui Xuanwei actually offered to send troops to escort Belus back to the country, thinking that Suggestions on consolidating the four towns of Anxi and appeasing the countries in the river;
The main reason is that the four towns of Anxi have been recaptured. Except for the Khotan Kingdom, most of the other places are not yet stable. There are a large number of remnants of the post-Turkic regime, nomadic among the vast desert oases and grasslands. Like a grass on the wall, it sways day and night.
Therefore, the control and influence of the Tang Army became more limited as they moved toward Congling (Pamir Plateau); especially in the northwestmost town of Suiye (near Tokmak, Kyrgyzstan today), what the Tang Army could control was Suiye Town. There are more than a dozen garrison and beacon towers in Yecheng and surrounding areas.
This still relied on the support of the descendants of Han immigrants in the city (such as Li Bai's ancestors), as well as some naturalized people and vassal tribes; only then did it initially gain a firm foothold. But it is unable to expand or take the initiative, and can only maintain the status quo with limited troops and wait for reinforcements.
However, the previous petitions from the prime ministers in Xijing have more or less affected this historical node; in other words, it is in the appendix about the possible potential commercial and tax benefits of the four towns in Anxi; it is calculated and planned through a series of reports Expected revenue of millions.
It’s really a sight to behold. Even if Emperor Gaozong only gave a symbolic gift of silk to commend these princes for assisting the prince in supervising the country, and not forgetting to understand the emperor's heart and being loyal to state affairs, there would be no further explanation; but privately, there was a faint wave of understanding and concern for Anxi. trend.
Among them, most of them are relatives of clan members and distinguished generals. Obviously, many of them are senior wealthy businessmen who have been in business all year round. They have cleverly proved that the price of a piece of Tang silk in the river has increased tenfold, and in faraway countries in Western Europe, it is even more expensive than gold and silver. It is also the reason why the benefits of money and silk are too exciting.
However, as the emperors and ministers of the Tang Dynasty, it was certainly not convenient for them to speak in the middle; but as these prominent families who share the country and have been rich and noble for many generations, there is no such taboo and avoidance of suspicion at all. What's even better is that it also received responses and calls from the nine surnames of Zhaowu in Tang Dynasty.
The so-called Zhaowu nine surnames, of course, do not refer to the nine simple countries, but refer to the general name of many local forces/small and medium-sized countries that have existed for a long time between Wuhu River and Yaoxashui River. Among them, there are Oasis city-states also have nomadic forces, and some are part-cultivating and part-grazing.
But their unified characteristics and expertise are that they rely on the Silk Road that traverses the east and west, and they rise and fall, and change back and forth. Therefore, in the process of interacting with the Central Plains dynasties, nine larger countries were selected from them based on their familiarity and influence. , collectively called the nine surnames of Zhaowu.
According to the naming habits after entering the Central Plains, they were divided into nine surnames: Kang, An, Cao, Shi, Mi, He, Shi, Huoxun, and Wudi. For a long time, there were Kang, An, Cao, Shi, Mi, and He. , Xiao'an, Dongcao, Zhongcao, Nasebo, Mu, Cao, Bi, Bohan, Wunahe and more than ten countries.
These nine Zhaowu surnames from the river have another collective name in China: Sogdians; they are also the source of many commercial groups that have been active on the eastern section of the Silk Road for a long time; many of them were naturalized in the Tang Dynasty. Later generations such as An Lushan and Shi Siming all originated from this.
But compared to the foreboding people who were hated by people in later generations, but relied on doing dirty work for the church and nobles to continue tenaciously; the Sogdians are more like a geographical concept (Sogdiana), who were expelled from the country through the ages. The nomadic peoples of the eastern grasslands created a hodgepodge of what was left after the Great Migration.
Therefore, analogous to India in most periods of history, it is the Sind River Basin - the Land of the Moonset, described by Tang Xuanzang in "The Western Regions of the Tang Dynasty". Therefore, it can be called a melting pot of national religions, including Zoroastrianism, Nestorianism, and Manichaeism that spread eastward, as well as Buddhism, Buddhism, and Manichaeism that spread northward.
And this time, in the restoration of Belus, there was actually the promotion and sponsorship of these Sogdians. The reason is also very simple. Compared with the Tubo people who come from a dangerous place on the plateau and whose ruling methods are rough and arrogant, it is more in the interest of the Chinese dynasty of China, which they have dealt with for generations.
(End of chapter)
