Guangzhou massacre

Guangzhou massacre
LocationGuangzhou, China
Date878–879
DeathsTens of thousands
PerpetratorsHuang 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]

  1. ^ Mackintosh-Smith 2014, p. 69.
  2. ^ Huang, Ray (1997). China: A Macro History. M. E. Sharpe. p. 117. ISBN 1-56324-730-5.
  3. ^ Gernet, Jacques (1996). A History of Chinese Civilization. Translated by Foster, J. R.; Hartman, Charles (2nd ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 292. ISBN 0-521-49712-4.
  4. ^ Rossabi, Morris (2013). A History of China. Wiley Blackwell. p. 198. ISBN 9781118473450. 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, 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.