Battle of the Defile

Battle of the Defile
Part of the Muslim conquest of Transoxiana
View of the Zarafshan Mountains from the Takhtakaracha Pass today
Date July 731 CE Location Takhtakaracha Pass, Transoxiana (modern Uzbekistan) 39°17′38″N 66°54′35″E / 39.29389°N 66.90972°E / 39.29389; 66.90972 Result See aftermath section
Belligerents
Umayyad Caliphate	Türgesh Khaganate and Transoxianian allies
Commanders and leaders
Junayd ibn Abd al-Rahman al-Murri Sawra ibn al-Hurr al-Abani  †	Suluk
Strength
over 40,000	Unknown
Casualties and losses
20,000 killed 25,000–30,000 killed	10,000 (Ibn A'tham)
class=notpageimage| Location within Uzbekistan

The Battle of the Defile or Battle of the Pass (Arabic: وقعة الشعب, romanized: Waqʿat al-Shʿib) was fought in the Takhtakaracha Pass (in modern Uzbekistan) between a large army of the Umayyad Caliphate and the Turkic Türgesh khaganate over three days in July 731 CE. The Türgesh had been besieging Samarkand, and Samarkand's commander, Sawra ibn al-Hurr al-Abani, had sent a request for relief to the newly appointed governor of Khurasan, Junayd ibn Abd al-Rahman al-Murri. Junayd's 28,000-strong army was attacked by the Türgesh in the pass, and although the Umayyad army managed to extricate itself and reach Samarkand, it suffered enormous casualties; Sawra's 12,000 men, who had been commanded to attack the Türgesh from the rear in a relief effort, were almost annihilated.

The battle, for which one of the most detailed accounts of the entire Umayyad era survives in the History of al-Tabari, halted or reversed Muslim expansion into Central Asia for a decade. The losses suffered by the Khurasani army also led to the transfer of reinforcements from the metropolitan regions of the Caliphate, which in the long term weakened the Umayyad regime and helped bring about its collapse twenty years later in the Abbasid Revolution that began in Khurasan.