Talas

Taraz, also known as Talas, stood on the river of the same name at the meeting of cultivated lands and the steppe. A major city on the route between Otrar and Balasagun, it had a citadel, a walled town and a commercial suburb. Its markets and workshops drew on the products of both the settled population and the pastoral peoples of the surrounding country.

The city prospered under the Karakhanids, who made it one of their centres. The Mongol conquests and subsequent struggles among Chagatai princes brought a decline in the settled towns of the Talas valley. The valley remained a place of political importance: in 1269 rival Mongol rulers met there to arrange a division of authority in Central Asia. In the sixteenth century the region became part of the Kazakh Khanate, and in the eighteenth the valley suffered during the wars with the Dzungars.