Guangzhou massacre
Guangzhou massacre | |
---|---|
Location | Guangzhou, China |
Date | 878–879 |
Deaths | Tens of thousands |
Perpetrators | Huang Chao's rebel army |
The Guangzhou massacre was a massacre of the inhabitants of the prosperous port city of Guangzhou in 878–879 by the rebel army of Huang Chao. Arab sources indicate that foreign victims, including Muslims, Jews, Christians, and Zoroastrians, numbered in tens of thousands based on Chinese records of prior inhabitants.[1][2][3] Two travellers from the Abbasid Caliphate, Abu Zaid al Hassan from Siraf writing decades afterwards, and al-Masudi writing in the 10th century, estimated that 120,000 or 200,000 foreigners were killed respectively, but according to Morris Rossabi, the numbers were inflated.[4]
Background
In the early 870s, drought and famine in
Massacre
In 878 AD after Huang Chao's forces pushed into southern China, they arrived at the gates of Khanfu (
Shine Toshihiko found that the location of the massacre in 877–878 in Abu Zayd's account was a clerical error and it actually showed that the location of the massacre in 760 AD was in Kanfu (now Yangzhou).[9] He pointed out that there was a confusion between the two massacres in Arab sources (the Kanfu Massacre was in Yangzhou in 760, while the Khanfu Massacre was in 878). Shine also supports the hypothesis of Kuwabara Jitsuzo about the latter Khanfu (Guangzhou) and said that Abu Zayd confused Khanfu with Kanfu. Shine assigns Khanfu to Qinfu (Qinzhou, 600 km west of Guangzhou).
According to the statement of Heguri-no-Hironari, a Japanese envoy to the Tang dynasty in Qinzhou, the city was the mother port of merchants called Shu-Kunlun who rescued Hironari and others who were drifted in Lin-yi in 753.
At first the citizens of Khanfu held out against him, but he subjected them to a long siege-this was in (877–878) until, at last, he took the city and put its people to the sword. Experts on Chinese affairs reported that the number of Muslims, Jews, Christians, and Zoroastrians massacred by him, quite apart from the native Chinese, was 120,000; all of them had gone to settle in this city and become merchants there. The only reason the number of victims from these four communities happens to be known is that the Chinese had kept records of their numbers.[1]
— Abu Zayd al-Sirafi
See also
References
- ^ a b Mackintosh-Smith 2014, p. 69.
- ISBN 1-56324-730-5.
- ISBN 0-521-49712-4.
- ISBN 9781118473450., in a text written in the mid tenth century, put the figure at 200,000. Both numbers are inflated, but they nonetheless indicate that the rebels attributed some of China's problems to the exploitation of foreigners, particularly merchants.
An Arab account written by Abu Zaid of Siraf within a couple of decades of Huang's rebellion estimated that Huang's forces massacred 120,000 Muslims, Jews, and other foreigners. Arab historian al-Mas'udi
- ^ Xiong 2009, p. cxv.
- ^ Tackett 2014, p. 188.
- ISBN 978-90-04-28529-3.
- ISBN 978-08021-4416-4.
Not content to massacre traders, Huang Chao also tried to kill China's main export industry by destroying the mulberry trees of south China.
- ^ Toshihiko, Shine (2020). "On the chinese migrants and overseas japanese. In ancient era : comparison with korea and Vietnam, and their role in cultural-technical transfer and diplomacy". The Journal of Intercultural Studies. 42: 59.
Bibliography
- Mackintosh-Smith, Tim (2014), Two Arabic Travel Books, Library of Arabic Literature
- Tackett, Nicholas (2014), The Destruction of the Medieval Chinese Aristocracy, Harvard University Asia Center
- Xiong, Victor Cunrui (2009), Historical Dictionary of Medieval China, United States of America: The Scarecrow Press, ISBN 978-0-8108-6053-7