Guangzhou massacre


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 who was attempting to overthrow the Tang dynasty. Victims included tens of thousands of foreign merchants, mainly Arabs and Persians.

Background

An earlier Yangzhou massacre took place in which Chinese rebels under Tian Shengong massacred the wealthy Arab and Persian merchant community.
Arab and Persian pirates raided and looted warehouses in Guangzhou in AD 758, according to a local Guangzhou government report on October 30, 758, which corresponded to the day of Guisi of the ninth lunar month in the first year of the Qianyuan era of Emperor Suzong of the Tang dynasty.
As Huang's forces scourged China from north to south, they arrived at the gates of Guangzhou in 878. His troops stormed Guangzhou, terrorizing the city and targeting the foreign population, which had grown quite wealthy over the years. Huang Chao's rebel forces tapped into popular sentiment that somehow the decline of the Tang fortunes and their own lives had been made worse by the presence of avaricious foreigners. Vengeance was brutal, with a death toll in what became known as the “Guangzhou Massacre” possibly reaching nearly 200,000 casualties, according to Arab sources.

Massacre

The Chinese rebels led by Huang Chao slaughtered Christians, Muslim Arabs, Jews, Muslim Persians, Zoroastrians when they seized and conquered, according to Arab writer Abu Zayd Hasan Ibn Yazid Sirafi. Huang Chao's army was in Guangzhou during 878–879. Mulberry groves were also ruined by Huang's army. According to Liu Xu, the lead editor of the Old Book of Tang, one of the official histories of the preceding Tang dynasty, thousands of Arab and Persian traders were killed when Yang-zhou was looted by the army of the rebel Tian Sheng-Gong.
Most of the victims were foreign and wealthy.
The death toll could have ranged from 120,000 to 200,000 foreigners.