anyone have info on tibetan/arab conflicts in central asia??

The person that Gao Xianzhi had captured was the King of Tashkent. The Prince of Tashkent escaped away to the various barbarian states and among them he spread words about Xianzhi's unfaithfulness and greed. The various barbarian states all became very angry at this, and with the Islamic empire in the lead, they secretly planned to strike the four districts in Xiyu. After Xianzhi heard about this, he attacked the Islamic empire with an army of 30,000 men, consisting of both Chinese and non-Chinese troops. His force travelled a great distance of 700 Chinese miles before encountering the Islamic army at the city of Talas. The battle lasted for five days. During this time the Qarluq Turks in the Tang army defected and they attacked the Tang forces together with the Islamic army. Xianzhi was decisively defeated. Most of his men were lost and only a few thousand remained. Then the Right Guard General Li Siye advised Xianzhi to escape away. The retreating path was narrow and difficult to travel, and the allied Ferghana troops were in front of them, their men and horses blocking the way. Siye went ahead, and with a large club he ordered his men to kill all the obstructing Ferghana soldiers. The men and horses were all slaughtered before Xianzhi's forces could go through.
The officers and soldiers of the Tang army were all scattered around and could not find each other. Then the Vice-General Duan Xiushi of Xinyang heard the sound of Siye. After they met Xiushi condemned him, saying: "To hide from the enemy and escape away is not courage, to save oneself by abandoning the army is not benevolence. Now fortunately you have been able to escape, but do you not feel any sense of guilt and shame?" Siye bowed to Xiushi and thanked him for his rebuttal. He then stayed behind to hold off enemy troops that were running after them. He also gathered up the scattered soldiers before returning to Anxi. All the soldiers that had ran away were excused from any punishment. After returning to Anxi, Siye told Xianzhi about what happened. Xianzhi therefore rewarded Duan Xiushi, putting him in charge of various forces in the provincial capital and making him a judge in the army.

Kyrgyzstan occupies a strategic position astride the Tian Shan Range separating the Tarim basin to the east from the Fergana valley to the west and both from the vast asian steppes to the north. It is therefore not surprising that the Issyk Kul region has been the stage for much of the action in that part of the world.

Early residents were the indo-European Saka nomads who opposed and finally stopped Alexander's eastward penetration into Asia in the 4th century BC. The Saka eventually had to submit to turkic speaking tribes who occupied the Issik Kul area until they fell to the Tang Dynasty Chinese in the 7th century. Tang expansion reached as far as Tashkent and Gilgit but diplomatic blunders by a Chinese general provoked a coalition of Turks, Arabs and Tibetans who trounced the Tang in the Talas valley (in north-west Kyrgyzstan) and drove them out of Central Asia in 751.

Muslim Qarakhanid Turks then controlled the Issik Kul plateau until they were overcome in 1130 by the Buddhist Kara Khitan mongols in who had been pushed out of northern China by the Djurchen tribes who came from the Ussuri river region of Manchuria.

The Kara-Khitan submitted to Genghis Khan and the Issik Kul plateau became part of the Chaghatai Mohgolistan which, having survived the advent of Tamerlane, became host to the Kyrgyz-Kazaks after their rebellious split with the sedentary Uzbek.

Today's Kyrgyz have come a long way from their nomadic origins on the shores of the siberian Ienissei river more than 15 centuries ago.