Place
Hoan Chau
The prefecture the Cuong muc places Mai Thuc Loan in when it records him seizing it and calling himself emperor in 722; by the Cuong muc's note, his home village also lay within it.
At a glance
- Location
- By the Cuong muc's note on Mai Thuc Loan's home, Mai Phu in Thien Loc, within Hoan prefecture, is now (in the nineteenth century) part of Can Loc district, Duc Tho prefecture, Ha Tinh province1
- Dates
- Mentioned under the year Nham Tuat, the tenth year of Kaiyuan under the Tang, that is 722, in the Cuong muc2
About the place
The old chronicles say
The Cuong muc, the national history compiled by the Nguyen court between 1856 and 1884, gives its headline entry as: autumn, the seventh month, Mai Thuc Loan of Hoan prefecture seized the prefecture and called himself emperor; the Tang sent the palace attendant Duong Tu Huc and others to attack and break him. This history follows the seventh month of the New Book of Tang, and places him in Hoan prefecture. The two earlier records cited here give no prefecture name: the basic annals of the Old Book of Tang say only that he attacked and besieged prefectures and districts, and the Complete Annals record that he seized a prefecture without saying which.234
How later ages remembered
The Cuong muc's note on Mai Thuc Loan's home adds: he came from Mai Phu, in Thien Loc, in Hoan prefecture, now part of Can Loc district, Duc Tho prefecture, Ha Tinh province; he had dark skin, so the people of the prefecture called him the Black Emperor. This is a nineteenth-century note, citing no source, more than eleven hundred years after the events.1
Mentioned in
Sources for this page
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