The tibetan empire was a terrible enemy of Tang, but...

Who are the tibetan warriors (VII-IX; tibetan empire)?

Tibetan (Tubo) leather lamellar armour of the 9th century:



Tibetan leather horse armour:



In this older thread on AE (from May this year), Warhead and I had a discussion about whether Tubo armies used chain mail armour:
http://mojtaba.proboards7.com/index.cgi?ac...279731&start=15

Can you say the procedence of this image/s (the tibetan armies)?

The complete map

Can you say the procedence of this image/s (the tibetan armies)?

Sorry, you'll have to explain to me what "procedence" means - there is no such word in English...

According to the description of Zi Zhi Tong Jiang and Tu Yu, the Tibetan warriors had very protective armours which covered their whole body except the 2 eyes and were of high quality praised throughout Asia, and one could also find many quotes in Arab sources praising their quality as well. But their archery and missile is not strong and were inferior to the Tang troops. They are said to be extremely valiant and considered death on the battle field an honor. Their discipline is also strong and has solid ranks.

¿"procedence"?. Nooooo: copyright.

What made the armor so strong?

I've heard of 'barbarians' who used some sort of special laquor to gain great resistance to blows; The chinese responded with flaming arrows. I've heard of the barbarians being Tibetan, I've also heard of them being vietnamese.

Now, does anyone have a picture of this fully enclosed Tibetan armor?

"Now, does anyone have a picture of this fully enclosed Tibetan armor?"


http://www.dbaol.com/armies/army_97_figure_1.htm

That seems nothing out of the ordinary though, the Tang had comparable suits.

What made Tibetan armor praised. Was it the design, the metals, how much of it they wore?

I'd be neat to see that fully enclosed helmet mentioned in Warhead's post.

To quote from the book "Army of Tang China" by Karl Heinz Ranitzsch, montvert publications.

"The men and horses all wear chain armour. It's worksmanship is extremely fine. It envelops them completely, leaving openings only for the two eyes. Thus strong bows and sharp swords cannot harm them. When they do battle, they must dismount and array themselves in ranks. When one dies another takes his place. To the end, they are not willing to retreat. Their lances are longer and thinner than those in China. Their archery is weak but their armour is strong. The men always use swords, when they are not at war they still go about carrying swords."

BTW, the arabs acknowledged the superiority of Tibetan chain to their own. I wonder what made it different?

It seems that Tibetan cavalry was powerful, but their infantry was not as good. Especially in regards to missile weapons.

so would they have dressed something like European knights of that time?

Tang armies of that time mostly wore lamellar in comparison, yeah? Enemies in full fine chain must have been impressive.

There are also popular southern china based martial arts that is said to be decended from Tibet.

Tibetan White Crane, Lama Pai, and Hop Gar.

Keep in mind that Tibetan chain was more protective than other types, the Tibetan armour is no representation of chain as a whole.

Most armies valued chain because it could be tailored to fit in places like the under armpits, neck etc. That being said, I've discussed on other forums why the Tang did not adopt chain if it was completely superior, as they certainly had the manpower to do so. At this moment it is a mystery.

"That seems nothing out of the ordinary though, the Tang had comparable suits.

What made Tibetan armor praised. Was it the design, the metals, how much of it they wore? "

There is nothing mentioned that said Tubo armour was superior in material, but their workmanship might have been delicate and heavy, thus protective but flexible. The material could have been steel similar to the Tang scale armour.

"It seems that Tibetan cavalry was powerful, but their infantry was not as good. Especially in regards to missile weapons"

On the contrast, it would seem Tibetan infantry is the dominant part of their army, that would be mounted infantry similar to the Tang armies.

My source states that the Tibetans had "Well equipped armies with a strong cavalry"

However, considering the Tibetans were not steppe people. They obviously would have had inferior cavalry skills to e.g turks and mongols. So the infantry was probably comparable to that of the Tang.

Where exactly in the Zizhi Tongjian or Tongdian is the passage about the use of chain mail by the Tibetan army? I've been wondering about this ever since Warhead brought up the issue on AE. Chinese narratives of the wars with the Tubo never seem to mention what arms or armour the enemy used, so if there is one then that would change my whole picture of the military dimension of those wars.

I used to think that the lamellar armour for man and horse captured by Younghusband's expedition illustrates the mainstream of Tibetan armour design. Now it appears that chain mail was the norm during the height of the Tubo empire, but the Tibetans moved back to lamellar after Tubo declined.

BTW there are colour photos of the Tibetan lamellar armour and horse armour here: http://www.chinahistoryforum.com/index.php...=0#entry4753785

It is possible that the Tibetans used lamellar and chain in conjunction. This combination was common among the byzantine armies.

I suspect the reason for this was that, although mail is superior in most aspects, lamellar armour offers better protection against blunt impact.

From p. 110 of The Tibetan Empire in Central Asia by Christopher I. Beckwith, putting in notes that the source for this passage is a Chinese primary source, Du Yu's Tongdian, 190: 1023a -

"The men and horses all wear chain mail armor. Its workmanship is extremely fine. It envelops them completely, leaving openings only for the two eyes. Thus, strong bows and sharp swords cannot injure them. When they do battle, they must dismount and array themselves in ranks. When one dies, another takes his place. To the end, they are not willing to retreat. Their lances are longer and thinner than those in China. Their archery is weak but their armor is strong. The men always use swords; when they are not at war they still go about carrying swords."

I think this is where warhead got his info from since, IIRC, he made post on AE containing info roughly similar to the passage quoted above from Beckwith's book.

I don't think mail was superior in most aspects, nor was it necessarily "better" than lamellar. Mail may have offered better protection in melee combat against opponents wielding swords using slashing maneuvers but against sharp weapons like spears, javelins, and arrows, mail was pretty vulnerable if these weapons are propelled by a launcher with great force; the rings will most likely break on contact, rendering the wearer of the mail vulnerable. We can see mail's vulnerability to archery in many cases; for example, at Carrhae when Parthian horse archers, launching arrows from recurved composite bows - a weapon in which Plutarch's emphasis may suggest that Roman arms at the time wasn't very effective against this weapon, rendered the Roman legionaries vulnerable, who were most likely clad in lorica hamata, ie Roman 4-ring mail. In the Crusades, starting from the late 11th century CE, there are various instances where Muslim horse archers, most likely the majority being Turkic, inflicted heavy casualties on the Crusaders with barrages of arrows. OTOH, the change in military tactics in East Asia during the AOF and the appearance of heavier and, perhaps, more effective, versions of the basic lamellar armor that had been used during Qin and Han times, also coincided with the neglect and seemingly decreasing importance of a strong missile weapon, the crossbow. IIRC, Yun or warhead cited from some Tang manual where Tang era lamellar armor (the newer reinforced versions based on Sassanian styles?) effectively decreased the range at which the crossbow would remain lethal to charging cavalrymen. These instances may suggest that lamellar armor, especially ones composed of iron and steel lamellar plates as had been common during the post-Han period, may have offered better protection against sharp thrusting weapons like the spear and against missile weapons fired at long distances.

that makes sense about chain mail being vulnerable to stabbing motions,Why would tang or tibetan cavalry would dismount to fight in battle wouldnt they be more effective as horsemen.

Chain does have some advantages over lamella armour.

#1 It is easier to combine chain with thick quilted/padded fabric armou. This combo provides very effective protection against cutting/slashing attacks and against chopping/clubbing attacks. This is also very effective gainst light long range arrows/quarrels. (re the Crusades examples suggested above, in fact the Turks were very concerned that they inflicted hardly any damage with long range atacks and had to resort to close in attacks on the Christian crossbowmen - who are often described as looking like hegehogs/porcupines because of all the arrows sticking in their chain/padded armour)

#2 While a thrusting weapon can burst links and penetrate chain, this adsorbs a considerable amount of force and greatly reduces the damage to the wearer. It also requires a narrow pointed weapon which will be far less effective against unarmoured parts/enemies. (English 'bodkin' arrows were designed to do just this, long thin trilobe Chinese arrows may have been speciically to attack armour)

#3 Pure lamella armour leaves a lot of unprotected areas that are very suceptable to thrusting attacks.

It's quite easy to see how an observer would think that full suits of chain protcting arms, armpits, faces etc was better than the early styles of lamella. The obvious solution was to cover the gaps in lamella by chain sections (China, Persia, Central Asia route) or to add solid plates to chain (European route).

Sources



Apart from the Tongdian passage that warlordgeneral has already cited from Beckwith, the other main description of Tibetan equipment that is often cited in Western works comes from Xin Tang shu. R A Stein, Tibetan Civilization (English edition Faber & Faber, London, 1972; original French edition 1962), p.62, says “Their armour is excellent. They clothe their entire body in it, except for eye-holes. Even powerful bows and keen blades can do them little harm.” This he attributes to Xin Tang shu CCXVIA. This looks as if it might be the same as, or very similar to, the first couple of sentences of the Tongdian passage.

However, Stein also cites "They have bows and swords, shields, spears, suits of armour and helmets... Both men and horses are covered in coats of mail of excellent manufacture" - attributed to Tongdian CXC. The second sentence of this corresponds to the first sentence of the Beckwith translation, so the first bit listing shields, spears, etc may precede that extract in the Tongdian.

Beckwith also says that the Tongdian passage is based on the T’ang liu tien (his spelling; Tang liu dian?), completed in AD 739. That’s interesting if correct, since it means that any developments that there might have been in Tibetan warfare after the mid-8th century will not be reflected in this source, and perhaps not in Xin Tang shu if that passage is indeed based on the Tongdian.

Checking exactly what both sources say, and in what context it is said, might be very useful.

Infantry and cavalry
The Tongdian passage presents a problem, to me. At first sight it might bear out warhead’s point that the Tibetans relied on mounted infantry, since it describes their normal tactics as dismounting. But that doesn’t seem to fit with the reference to horse-armour in the same passage – “The men and horses all wear chain mail armour”. It doesn’t seem to make sense to go to the trouble and expense of armouring your horses – let alone breeding, or acquiring, and maintaining horses big and strong enough to take the weight of horse-armour in the first place – if you’re just going to hop off the horses all the time, rendering the investment irrelevant.

Certainly some Tibetan armies, by the 9th century, seem to have been composed entirely of cavalry. Beckwith (in “The Tibetans in the Ordos and North China: Considerations on the Role of the Tibetan Empire in World History” in Christopher Beckwith (ed.), Silver on Lapis: Tibetan Literary Culture and History, Tibet Society, Bloomington, Indiana, 1987), mentions an army of 50,000 cavalry sent to attack the Uighurs in the Ordos in 809, along with other long-distance campaigns into Mongolia that would probably entail all-cavalry armies. Shakabpa (Shakabpa, Tsepan W D, Tibet: A Political History, Yale University Press, 1967) recounts the surrender of an Indian king to a Tibetan expedition: seeing long columns of Tibetan cavalry making their way into his country, he assumed that so many cavalry must be followed by an even greater number of infantry and elephants, and so surrendered at once against such overwhelming odds – but in fact, the cavalry were all there were!

Other sources mention infantry, but they appear to be conventional infantry marching on foot; for example, a Tibetan chronicle describes an army of the Imperial period on the march, with cavalry in the van, archers and "dagger-armed soothsayers" in the centre, and mailed spearmen marching last (Thomas, F W, “Tibetan Documents concerning Chinese Turkestan. VI: The Tibetan Army”, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society April 1933 and July 1933). I have only ever seen the dismounting idea mentioned in the Tongdian quote.

Professor Beckwith suggests (pers.comm. 2001) that “It seems pretty clear that although the Tibetans had horses from very early on, they fought on foot originally”, but that later on they grew very competent at the swift nomad-style cavalry raiding campaign.

What I would suggest is that early Tibetan armies may have contained a lot of mounted infantry. As time went on, by the later 8th century they had acquired enough good cavalry horses, as opposed to the little hill ponies that many of them started with, to make it worth armouring them, and were rich enough to afford the armour. Those men on big, armoured horses would normally fight mounted, but may have retained the tradition of dismounting to the extent that they would do so more readily than other cavalry. The Tongdian passage reflects a stage in that development.

It would be good if someone would like to go through the Tang dynastic histories to see if there are any other passages, or incidents in battle-accounts, that can confirm or disprove this suggestion, but I presume it would be a very big job!

Oh yes – Tibetan documents also mention officers in charge of camels (dni-dpon – see Thomas), but whether these are mounts for soldiers or just baggage-camels I don’t know!

Excellent stuff DuncanHead, especially the analysis. Though I don't have much insightful comments to add and what I say next might be a bit too overgeneralizing, I think it does make sense that Yarlung Tibetan tactics changed, possibly from the mid-8th century CE from primarily being mounted infantry to nomadic-style cavalry. Interestingly, from the mid-8th century CE on starting from the An-Shi Rebellion of 755 CE, the Tang gradually lost their hold and influence in Central Asia and possibly by the early 9th, they weren't as great a power as they were back during Xuanzong's time and most definitely back during Taizong and Gaozong's time. From the vacuum that the Tang left in Central Asia, we see the rise of the Turkic Uygur empire in Mongolia, and you've also brought up instances of Yarlung Tibetans even campaigning deep into Mongolia, which seriously strikes me and makes me think of why the general neglect of the Yarlung Tibetans' influence as a major power in general and easily accessible Western sources on East Asian history. I'm thinking that these facts may not fit into the overly exaggerated stereotypical images of Tibetans as always being oppressed by evil Communist Chinese and the Tibetan "Shangri-la!" in the Western, specifically U.S., media. But I'll leave that out for another thread. Anyway, it makes sense that the Tibetans adopted more and more cavalry-oriented armies to fight in the nomadic-style, now with the Tang's primarily mounted infantry armies gone, that they were facing constant conflict with another powerful empire in East Asia - that of the nomadic Turkic Uygurs.

OK, I have checked Xin Tangshu Chapter 216 Part 1: "The Tubo, Part 1", and it concurs with Stein. The passage on the Tubo army goes: “Their armour and helmets are excellent. They clothe their entire body in it, except for eye-holes. Even powerful bows and keen blades can do them little harm. Their military discipline is strict, and they have no supply train, getting all their grain by capturing it from the enemy. In every battle, their front company must be annihilated before the company behind it moves in."

There is no mention of mail, horse armour, or dismounting. If anyone has the Tongdian passage, do share it with us.

Thanks, Yun. As far as I can remember I haven't seen the supply-train sentence quoted before.

This relates to a period long after the Tibetan/Tubo/Yar-lung Empire, but some of you may still be interested to know that the Met in New York is having an exhibition of Tibetan arms and armour next year - see http://www.metmuseum.org/special/se_event....CB529C69DC56%7D

Even for those of us who aren't likely to get to NY, the catalogue will no doubt be interesting. The exhibition is curated by Donald LaRocca, who wrote “An approach to the study of arms and armour from Tibet”, in Royal Armouries Yearbook 4 (1999) - a very useful article. He mentions several pieces that have radiocarbon dates (for leather armour, or the lacing of metal armours) in the 15th-17th centuries, where they might otherwise have been thought to be more recent.

I believe that came from the Tu Yu, not the TongJian

Warhead, the Tongdian was written by Du You (Tu Yu) of the Tang. You're confusing the Tongdian with the Tongjian (Zizhi Tongjian).

Ok, thanks for the clarification. Is there any other work written by him?

Im reading a book called "life along the silk road" written by susan whitfeild.


This is mentioned as being written in 801ad by Du YU in this book

Chinese fought the tibetans over a fortress called by tibetans Iron Blade,and by the chinese Stone fort.Koso Khan had an army of 63,000 men to attack iron blade fortress,they fought on the plains beneath the fortress."as usual the tibeatans put non tibetan cavalry as vangaurd,both sides used foreign divisions as battle fodder,then came the lightly armoured horse archers with pouches of poisioned arrows which they let loose among chinese soldiers,in their ranks were the iron chain mail tibeatan foot soldiers in the rear almost impregnable to chines swords and arrows,only the long steel tipped arrows of chinese longbow could hope to peirce it.Each tibetan foot soldier carried a sword a lance,daggers and catapults(?),and the chinese were similarily equipped.behind the lines were a row of heavy artillery.Chinese archers made liberal use of fire arrows and some of the foot soldiers were equipped with heavy lances tipped with combustibal material which they set alight and projected from flexible bamboo poles into tibetan forces.After several days fighting the chiense pushed the tibeatns back to the fortress as a heavy cost and took the castle after a tremendous cost.The chinese used thin earthenware pots filled with arsenicand powdered limemaking toxic smoke bombs.

From another chapter in a battle were uighurs allied with chinese to fight the Tibetans.
"The uighurs considered themselves more of a match for the cumbersome Tibetan cavalry,the chinese infantry was equipped with crossbows with leather flighted arrows.and with longbows whose steel tipped arrows could peirce the tibetan armour.The tibetan infantry were the man threat ,Heavily armed encassed in armour they were known for their bravery under attack.But the tibetan army was also reinforced by turkic soldiers who were exellent cavalrymen.The tibetan army was waiting for the allied army under Beshbaliq.The chinese and uighurs could make no headay agaisnt the tibetans and as the battle progressed they became weak and dispirited,then at last the tibetan lines begun to advance a grey ironclad mass of tibetan infantry rolled foward relentlessly routing the enemy.

I read that book too, but I wonder where she drew alot of her sources from. She uses first person narrative in alot of her writings, and it makes me wonder where she got the Tibetan first person narrative of the war.

She runs the international Dunhuang project she has acces to silk road manuscripts Warhead were did u get the time to gain so much knoledge at only 20 years old

"Catapults" may possibly just mean a sling: Aurel Stein found a sling of woven goat-hair in the Tibetan fort at Miran, and a sling is also mentioned in an equipment list of a Tibetan infantry archer found at the Mazar Tagh fort near Khotan (in the Thomas article I cited earlier).

I am a little wary of relying on details in Whitfield. She says in the introduction that she's fleshed out the accounts with details from elsewhere; this inevitably involves a lot of interpretation. For instance I think her description of Tibetan infantry deploying behind the cavalry in the battle-scene quoted may be drawn from the Tibetan order of march that I cited from Thomas, which had mailed infantry spearmen in the rear; while the reference to the mailed infantry being almost invulnerable probably comes from Du Yu's Tongdian passage, which she quotes - interpreting the dismounting men of that passage as being mounted infantry rather than dismounting cavalry. So the detail in her battle accounts may come from other battles, or from general descriptions of the tactics of the time.

Yes, that was my feel of it too. Trying to reconstruct the details of battles from notoriously laconic Chinese records can be a worthy effort, and certainly you need to do some of that to produce an exciting book that will sell, but simply taking general descriptions of tactics and weapons from elsewhere, and assuming that those were the same tactics and weapons used in that battle, is not a credible reconstruction. A lot of Whitfield's book is based on her own imaginative interpretation of sources and archaeology, and this puts it in in the same semi-fictional category as most of Jonathan Spence's books.

Taken from "Tibet: The secret continent", Michel Peissel

It seems that Tibetan blacksmiths produced the best armour of the period, consisting of fishscale-like overlapping semi-cylindrical metal plates sewn on to leather and cotton underclothing.

I wouldn't go that far. The best Tang armours are folded steel fish scale. Designed in similar fashions.

The Tibetans seem to have had a greater focus on heavy infantry. So it shouldn't be suprising they would have heavier/more protective infantry armour. But this seems to have been scale rather than lamellar, which means it would have been unsuitable for cavalry where an upward lance thrust would easily slip underneath the hanging plates.

What are the archeological evidence for the Tubo armours? Whats their weight? All I've seen is descriptions, not actual finds. Song infantry has armours of up to 35 kg. Thats very heavy. Tang didn't just focus on cavalry armour either, in fact, it still have more infantry than cavalry as any other Chinese dynasty.

There are lots of later Tibetan armours, but I cant think of anything contemporary to Tang.
I'm also fascinated by the repeated Chinese comments about heavy Tibetan mail etc.. I can't help feeling that the elite cavalry forces seen in China may have been much better armoured than most Tibetan troops, thus giving us a false impression.

None of the Tang sources mention superiority of Tubo armour, they just praise them. And it seems they are more fascinated by the QUANTITY that were present.

In the book The army of Tang army it says that a turksih Khagan shot at a Tibetan warrior but his arrow would not hurt the armour of the tibetan ,the tibetan then shot the khagan and hurt him.

The tibetan armies managed to defeat the Tang armies in quite a few battles , Was it due to their superior armour?

Thats hardly a feat, Tang armours can do the same. Records that mention heavy crossbows that are unable to penetrate.

Was turk armour inferior surely the khagan would want good armour to protect himself,
How did tibetan armies compare to the tang ones,how did they defeat the tang armies

Most major defeat is actually do to numerical superiority, Zi Zhi Tong Jian(or Tang shu I don't remember which one) mentions 200,000 Tubo army against Xue Reng Gui's 100,000 and overpowered him. Similarily in 678, it was 400,000 Tubo army. Such lare number ensured two Tibetan victories in the battle of QinHai. Also Most of the battles Tang faught Tubo was at the mountain range of Kashmir or QinHai. Terrains which the native Tibetans are more suitable.

You can find the heat of battle in Qin Hai in DuFu's famous
Song of War Chariots.

"The war-chariots rattle,
The war-horses whinny.
Each person with bows and quivers at his waist.
Father, mother, son, wife, follow with farewell,
Till dust shall have buried the Xien Yang bridge.
They run with you, crying, they tug at your sleeves,
And the sound of their sorrow goes up to the clouds;
And every time a bystander asks the soldier a question,
The soldier can only say to him “They are calling up replacements”.
Some at fifteen are sent north to guard the river line.
And at forty sent west to cultivate the campfarms.
The mayor wound their turbans for them when they started out.
With their turbaned hair white now, they are still at the border,
At the border where the blood of men spills like the sea.
Yet the Emperor Wu’s border expansion are not over,
Do you herd that, the two hundred counties east of the passes of Han,
There in thousands of villages, nothing grows but weeds,
And though strong women have bent to the ploughing,
East and west the furrows all are broken down?
Men of Qin are able to face the stiffest battle,
But their officers drive them like chickens and dogs.
Whatever is asked of them,
Dare they complain?
For example, this winter
Held west of the gate,
Challenged for taxes,
How could they pay?
We have learned that to have a son is bad luck-
It is very much better to have a daughter
Who can marry and live in the house of a neighbour,
While under the sod we bury our boys.
Go to Qing Hai, look along the shore
At all the old white bones forsaken
New ghosts are wailing there now with the old,
Loudest in the dark sky of a stormy day. "

can you really believe tibetans could amass such massive armies,exaggertaion surely/.

The Tibetans seem to have made wide use of auxillaries.... so it's plausible.

100,000 yes but not sure how they could feed or amass
400,000

Here is a description of the Tubo government structure. It has copied large parts of its government from the Tang such as the 6 boards.

The ZanPu is the highest ruler, below him is the Lun Chen or great prime minister, as well as the vice prime minister which take care of the entire state's problems. after these are the Du Hu(protectorate commisioner), which takes care of military campaigns and vassals. Then there is the inner prime minister, and inner vice prime minister as well as lower prime minister to take care of internal court issues. The board of punishment is the primary department for law. Within the board are president, vice president and little president. It is all hereditary.
Other than that the local structure of Tubo includes Ru Beng, Dong Beng, Yu Beng, Chu BengChang Beng, as well as those copied from the Tang such as Jie Du Shi(military commisioner), Tao Ji Shi(campaign commisioner, Da Bing Ma Shi, Yin Tian Shi(farm commisioner), Wan Fu Zhang(Tumen), Qian Fu Zhang, and Bai Fu Zhang.
Song Zan Gan Bu set up a Qian Hu Fu which combined military matters with governing matters.
Tubo is a very structured and organized empire with an agricultrual based center surrounded by nomadic tribes, it has probably near 10 million people at the height of its power, has no problem drawing upwards of 400,000 forces in war, especially when the invasion is extremely serious.