History of Quanzhou

Wang Guoqing used the area as a base of operations for the Chen State before he was subdued by the Sui general Yang Su in the ad 590s. Quanzhou proper was established under the Tang in 718 on a spit of land between two branches of the Jin River. Muslim traders reached the city early on in its existence, along with their existing trade at Guangzhou and Yangzhou.

Already connected to inland Fujian by roads and canals, Quanzhou grew to international importance in the first century of the Song. It received an office of the maritime trade bureau in 1079 or 1087 and functioned as the starting point of the Maritime Silk Road into the Yuan, eclipsing both the overland trade routes and Guangzhou. A 1095 inscription records two convoys, each of twenty ships, arriving from the Southern Seas each year. Quanzhou’s maritime trade developed the area’s ceramics, sugar, alcohol, and salt industries. Ninety per cent of Fujian’s ceramic production at the time was jade-colored celadon, produced for export. Frankincense was such a coveted import that promotions for the trade superintendents at Guangzhou and Quanzhou were tied to the amount they were able to bring in during their terms in office. During this period it was one of the world’s largest and most cosmopolitan seaports. By 1120, its prefecture claimed a population of around 500,000. Its Luoyang Bridge was formerly the most celebrated bridge in China and the 12th century Anping Bridge is also well known.

Quanzhou initially continued to thrive under the Southern Song produced by the Jin–Song Wars. A 1206 report listed merchants from Arabia, Iran, the Indian subcontinent, Sumatra, Cambodia, Brunei, Java, Champa, Burma, Anatolia, Korea, Japan and the city-states of the Philippines. One of its customs inspectors, Zhao Rugua, completed his compendious Description of Barbarian Nations c. 1225, recording the people, places, and items involved in China’s foreign trade in his age. Other imperial records from the time use it as the zero mile for distances between China and foreign countries. Tamil merchants carved idols of Vishnu and Shiva and constructed Hindu temples in Quanzhou. Over the course of the 13th century, however, Quanzhou’s prosperity declined due to instability among its trading partners and increasing restrictions introduced by the Song in an attempt to restrict the outflow of copper and bronze currency from areas forced to use hyperinflating paper money. The increasing importance of Japan to China’s foreign trade also benefited Ningbonese merchants at Quanzhou’s expense, given their extensive contacts with Japan’s major ports on Hakata Bay on Kyushu.

Under the Mongolian Yuan dynasty, a superintendent of foreign trade was established in the city in 1277, along with those at Shanghai, Ningbo, and Guangzhou. The former Song superintendent Pu Shougeng, an Arab or Persian Muslim, was retained for the new post, using his contacts to restore the city’s trade under its new rulers. He was broadly successful, restoring much of the port’s former greatness, and his office became hereditary in his descendants. Into the 1280s, Quanzhou sometimes served as the provincial capital for Fujian. Its population was around 455,000 in 1283, the major items of trade being pepper and other spices, gemstones, pearls, and porcelain. Marco Polo recorded that the Yuan emperors derived “a vast revenue” from their 10% duty on the port’s commerce; he called Quanzhou’s port “one of the two greatest havens in the world for commerce” and “the Alexandria of the East”. Ibn Battuta simply called it the greatest port in the world. Polo noted its tattoo artists were famed throughout Southeast Asia. It was the point of departure for Marco Polo’s 1292 return expedition, escorting the 17-year-old Mongolian princess Kököchin to her fiancé in the Persian Ilkhanate; a few decades later, it was the point of arrival and departure for Ibn Battuta. Kublai Khan’s invasions of Japan and Java sailed primarily from its port. The Islamic geographer Abulfeda noted, in c. 1321, that its city walls remained ruined from its conquest by the Mongols. In the mid-1320s, Friar Odoric noted the town’s two Franciscan friaries, but admitted the Buddhist monasteries were much larger, with over 3000 monks in one.

In 1357, the Shiite Muslim garrison undertook the Ispah Rebellion against the Yuan and their local Sunni Muslim leadership. By 1362, they controlled the countryside as far as the outskirts of Fuzhou, but after a defeat by the Yuan there they retreated to Quanzhou. There, their leaders were killed by Nawuna, a descendant of Pu Shougeng, who was killed in turn by Chen Youding. Chen began a campaign of persecution against the city’s Sunni community—including massacres and grave desecration—that eventually became a three days of anti-foreign massacre. Emigrants fleeing the persecution rose to prominent positions throughout Southeast Asia, spurring the development of Islam on Java and elsewhere. The Yuan were expelled in 1368.

The Ming discouraged foreign commerce other than formal tributary missions. By 1473, trade had declined to the point that Quanzhou was no longer the headquarters of the imperial customs service for Fujian. The “Japanese” or “dwarf” pirates, most of whom were actually disaffected Chinese, forced Quanzhou’s Superintendency of Trade to close completely in 1522. During the Qing Dynasty, the Sea Ban did not help the city’s traders or fishermen: they were forced to abandon their access to the sea for years at a time and coastal farmers forced to relocate miles inland to inner counties like Yongchun and Anxi. Violent large scale clan fights with the thousands of non-native families from Guangdong who were deported to Quanzhou city by the Qing immediately occurred,

In the 19th century, the city walls still protected a circuit of 7–8 miles (11–13 km) but embraced much vacant ground. The bay began to attract Jardines’ and Dents’ opium ships from 1832. Following the First Opium War, Governor Henry Pottinger proposed using Quanzhou as an official opium depot to keep the trade out of Hong Kong and the other treaty ports but the rents sought by the imperial commissioner Qiying were too high. When Chinese pirates overran the receiving ships in Shenhu Bay to capture their stockpiles of silver bullion in 1847, however, the traders moved to Quanzhou Bay regardless. Around 1862, a Protestant mission was set up in Quanzhou. As late as the middle of the century, large Chinese junks could still access the town easily, trading in tea, sugar, tobacco, porcelain, and nankeens, but sand bars created by the rivers around the town had generally incapacitated its harbor by the First World War. It remained a large and prosperous city, but conducted its maritime trade through Anhai.

Source From: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quanzhou#History