"The Chinese dynasties of the past dynasties, with their strong national strength and prestige, have made foreign countries admire, and those who come to make friends are the first to recommend the Han and Tang dynasties. If these two dynasties are compared with each other, then the exchanges between the Tang Dynasty and other countries many years ago have far surpassed the Han Dynasty, and it can be said that China is the first to be strong.

There is an inconspicuous record in it: "In the third year of Zhenguan, the king of Fulin, Duoli, sent an envoy to offer red glass, green gold essence and other things......"

According to the research and research of historians, the name "Fulin" is the name of the Byzantine Empire in Chinese classics.

It was this inconspicuous piece of news that set off the pace of the Tang Dynasty to claim land from Europe farther away, and also laid the groundwork for the Tang Dynasty to replace Byzantium as another century empire across Europe, Asia and Africa.

In the first year of the Tang Dynasty (330 AD), around the Eastern Jin Dynasty in China, Constantine the Great of the Holy Roman Empire moved the capital of Rome to Byzantium and renamed it "Constantinople". From then on, the western and eastern parts of the Roman Empire each followed different paths. In the year of Jiazi in the Tang Dynasty (476 AD), the western part of the empire was overturned by the Germanic barbarian invasion, while the eastern part of the empire stood tall for nearly a thousand years despite many disasters. After severing with the Latinized West, the East began to pass through the Greek~., which naturally made the Orthodox Church orthodox. After integrating the concept of Roman politics and oriental cultural factors, a new empire was finally formed, which was different from both ancient Greece and ancient Rome, and was historically called Byzantium.

Of course, Byzantium was given its name by later scholars in order to distinguish it from the original Roman Empire. But the Byzantines themselves would not recognize this name. in their minds. This is the orthodox continuation of the original Roman Empire. The Byzantine monarchs still proclaimed themselves Roman emperors. The populace called themselves the Romans, and Constantinople was also called New Rome.

The word Roman, through the layers of paraphrases of various ethnic groups in West Asia and Central Asia, has already undergone many phonetic changes when it reaches China, and it has been recorded by historians as Fulin.

Tang Taizong was no stranger to this new imperial division, in fact, he had already vaguely heard of the Fulin Kingdom. As early as the lifetime of Emperor Yang of the Sui Dynasty, Pei Juzai even described the route from China to Byzantium: "Through the Pule Sea, the Tiele Department, the Turkic Khan's Pavilion, the Beiliu River, to the Fulin, to the West Sea." ”

The pioneer Xu Yang once introduced to Tang Taizong in more detail the current situation of the Byzantine Empire in Europe, which is a history that Europeans call itself a dark age, without a Renaissance and without scientific democracy. There was only religious ignorance and fanaticism in Europe during this period. It was also in the midst of a war, and the powerful iron hooves of the Arab Empire began to trample on European soil with impunity.

For the arrival of the Byzantine mission, as well as the request to communicate with the Tang Dynasty, Taizong was also very happy, he 'sent the jade seal book to be very relieved", and rewarded the mission with a lot of silk and silk.

But the Byzantine envoys did not come for this reward, they were burdened with an important mission - to form an alliance with the Tang Dynasty, or it can be said that they asked for help from the Tang Dynasty.

In the first half of the seventh century, Byzantium experienced two major wars, the war against the Persian Sassanids on the eastern frontier and the Teara war on the northern frontier. Among them, the war against Persia had a greater impact on the future fate of Byzantium. In the first year of Zhenguan of the Tang Dynasty (627 AD), that is, the year Li Er ascended the throne, the emperor of the Byzantine Empire, Heraclius, completely defeated the Persian army. But in terms of consequences, both Byzantium and Persia became losers, and to use an old Chinese saying, the sandpiper and the clam compete, and the fisherman wins.

The fisherman is referring to the Arabs. As Byzantium and Persia had been consumed too much in the long confrontation, both empires were powerless to resist in the face of a sudden Arab attack. From the first year of Zhenguan to the seventeenth year of Zhenguan, Arab-Islamic snobbery was the most powerful and intractable opponent of the Tang Dynasty in Europe, and it also succeeded in seizing most of Byzantium's territory in Asia and North Africa, while the Persian Empire and some of the smaller imperial city-states in Europe had long since perished.

The Byzantines, having experienced the formidable fighting power of these religious fanatics since the beginning of the Arab invasion, were now in dire need of a strong foreign aid to defend against the Arab crescents. Finding a helper in case of difficulties is an old diplomatic strategy of Byzantium. For example, a few decades ago, Byzantium sent envoys to the newly emerging Eastern Turks in Central Asia to form an anti-Persian alliance against the Sassanid Empire.

The Eastern Turks were also really righteous enough, and they fought with Persia for 20 years, which greatly relieved the pressure on the Byzantine border. In the twenties of the seventh century, a group of the Western Turks that migrated westward again attacked Persia and supported Heraclius' war against Persia.

At the same time that the Arabs were pressing on Byzantium step by step, the Tang Empire in East Asia, under the command of Tang Taizong, launched an all-out attack, and won a complete victory in the attack on the Eastern Turks, and the wool Huairou policy towards the Western Turks also quickly achieved results.

As we all know, at that time, our country was in the first period of great development in history, the economy took off, the materials were abundant, Nanshan Academy, overseas exploration, colonial trade and other events full of passion and vitality were constantly staged on the land of China, Tang Taizong with the help of the power of the entire empire, quickly swept away the eastern and western Turks that threatened the security of the Tang Dynasty, and sent the pioneer Xu Yang on the islands of Silla, Baekje, Goryeo, and the three kingdoms of the archipelago to fight a great victory, and successfully obtained the absolute right to speak, at this time, The battle against Tuguhun on the Qinghai border also came to an end, and the Tang army won again, and for a time, the Tang Dynasty had been named the "Chengguan E Team" The troops were called synonymous with undefeated.

For a time, the Tang Empire was no longer the unreachable eastern country of the past, but a powerful unified empire with weight in Central Asia, and at the same time had a strong trade and consumption capacity. Seeing the glimmer of hope, Byzantium sent emissaries to the Tang Dynasty in the hope of forming an alliance with the Tang against the Arabs.

According to the words mentioned by the pioneer Xu Yang, we can know that the Byzantine envoys have gone through hardships on the road to the Tang Dynasty, because the Arabs have occupied the entire territory of Persia and some parts of Europe, blocking the Silk Road through the Iranian plateau, and the functions of the Byzantine envoys have crossed the Caspian Sea, the Aral Sea, the southern mountains of the Tianshan Mountains, and Hami before finally reaching Chang'an. This is the same path they took decades ago when they exchanged emissaries with the Western Turks.

Although the old Tang book only has a few words about this Byzantine visit, which is a bit vague, and Xu Yang did not say in detail about this meeting with the Byzantine envoy, the following sentence gives us the basis for speculation, saying that the Byzantine envoy vomited bitterness to Tang Taizong: "Arrogance eats strong and prosperous, and gradually ravages the countries...... Because of the reconciliation, please lose the gold silk every year, and then the subordinates will eat it. ”

Da Shi is the ancient Chinese name for Arab snobbery, which means that the Arabs bullied people, we fought a war with them, and later negotiated peace, paid tribute to them every year, and became a subject country of others.

According to expert research, Byzantium has never been subordinate to Arabia, and there is a lot of controversy about which battle the envoy refers to.

But from two points can be determined, Byzantium did not have any diplomatic ties with the Tang Dynasty before, at this time of anxiety, if they just want to offer red glass, green gold essence, they travel thousands of miles to Chang'an, wouldn't they be full of food? Besides, when the two countries established diplomatic relations for the first time, they should have established their own strong and beautiful images, how could they talk about the Arabs bullying people, and finally said that Byzantium had become a vassal state of Arabia in poor terms.

Combined with various background events, we can boldly speculate that the purpose of Byzantium's visit this time was to seek military support from Tang Taizong and ask him to set foot on the battlefield in Central Asia to relieve Byzantium from the crisis.

Since the historian did not record this incident at all, and there was no detailed record in Xu Yang's blog post, we can only speculate that this time, Li Shimin refused to ......" -- excerpt from (to be continued......