Arabs and Chinese

I spent this afternoon in the library looking mainly at archaeological reports, when I stumbled across an article by Zhang Jun-yan about early relations between China and the Middle East. It never ceases to amaze me how interconnected much of the world was even with medieval transportation. Chinese sources mention that during the 5th century, vessels from the Liu-Sung dynasty frequently sailed to the Persian Gulf and traded with the Lakhmids near their capital in al-Hira. With the expansion of Islam into Central Asia, contacts only increased, and Arabs traders in China settled down and in at least one case took the civil service exams and entered the Tang bureaucracy. The Abbasids sent military forces to China to help put down the An Lushan Rebellion, and they wound up staying in China. Even when relations deteriorated, such as with an event called the Battle of the Talas, there was cultural exchange: Chinese prisoners from the battle were settled in Samarkand, where they introduced paper into the Islamic world.