In December 757 Uyghur horsemen plundered Luoyang for three days, after they had helped the Tang retake the city from the rebels of An Lushan.[1] The plunder ended with a payment in silk and luxury goods.[1]

The agreement

According to the minister Li Mi, who recalled it thirty years later, the Tang and the Uyghurs had agreed that land and people would go to the Tang, and jade, silk and women and children to the Uyghurs.[2] One modern account speaks of the agreement made at Chang’an that the Uyghurs then used.[3]

When the Uyghurs had retaken the western capital, they wished to enter the city and loot it. The Prince of Guangping, the commander of the Tang army, firmly stopped them.[4] Li Mi adds that the prince dismounted and bowed to the Uyghur yabghu, and that the Uyghurs then turned east towards the river Luo.[2]

Three days of plunder

When the army retook the eastern capital, the Uyghurs entered the treasuries, took goods from the markets and plundered the villages and wards for three days.[4] The Jiu Tang Shu says the goods could not be counted.[4] The Xin Tang Shu says that wicked men guided the Uyghurs, that the treasuries were emptied, and that the prince wanted to stop them and could not.[2]

Two accounts of the payment

The two histories end the plunder differently. In the Jiu Tang Shu the Prince of Guangping gave the yabghu brocade, woollen rugs and treasures, and the yabghu was very pleased.[4] In the Xin Tang Shu the elders of the city bribed the Uyghurs with 10,000 bolts of silk and brocade, and the plunder stopped.[2]

Neither history reconciles the two. The accounts agree that the plunder ended with goods and not with force, and they differ on who paid and how much.

Afterwards

The yabghu went back to Chang’an. The officials met him at Changle, and the emperor feasted him in the Xuanzheng Hall.[4] On 30 December 757 an edict honoured him and granted him 20,000 bolts of silk a year.[4] The payments that followed are described in Uyghur Horse-Silk Trade.

The Uyghurs came back to Luoyang in 762, again after the defeat of a rebel. The people of the city climbed into the two pavilions of the Shengshan and Baima monasteries to hide. The Uyghurs set the pavilions on fire, and the Jiu Tang Shu counts the injured and dead in the ten thousands.[4]

References

  1. ^ a b Jiu Tangshu (Old Book of Tang), juan 195; Xin Tangshu (New Book of Tang), juan 217
  2. ^ a b c d Xin Tangshu (New Book of Tang), juan 217
  3. ^ Mackerras 1972, p. 21
  4. ^ a b c d e f g Jiu Tangshu (Old Book of Tang), juan 195

Sources

Literature

  • Colin Mackerras, The Uighur Empire According to the T'ang Dynastic Histories (1972)

Related

What links here1

Institutions and Titles
Uyghur Horse-Silk Trade

Cite this article

Yavuz, Emre-E. “Plunder of Luoyang and the Silk Payment (757).” Turkic Atlas, revised 7 November 2026. https://turkicatlas.org/events/plunder-of-luoyang-757/

Last revised: 7 November 2026