Wang Xianzhi, as of 875 (by which time Emperor Yizong has died and his young son Emperor Xizong is emperor), is repeatedly defeating Xue Chong, the military governor of Tianping Circuit (headquartered in modern Tai'an, Shandong).

Huang rises as well, with several thousand men, and joins Wang.

Two Arab fleets had arrived in Taranto, in 871 and later in 875, carrying troops that sack Campania and Apulia.

The situation in southern Italy worries Emperor Basil I, who decides to fight the Arabs and take from them the harbor of Taranto, which the Saracens have held for nearly forty years.

It is from here that ships loaded with prisoners sail to the Arab ports, where their prisoners are sold in the slave markets.

…the territory surrounding Badajoz, which he either founds or re-founds, and begins to fortify.

Louis, having failed to win control of the south, returns to northern Italy, dies near Ghedi, in what is now the province of Brescia, on August 12, 875, and is buried in the church of Basilica of Sant'Ambrogio at Milan, having named as his successor in Italy his cousin Carloman, son of Louis the German.

Charles the Bald, supported by Pope John VIII, becomes the Frankish emperor as Roman Emperor Charles II in 875.

Wang Xianzhi, through the Tang official Wang Liao, the cousin or brother of the chancellor Wang Duo, and Pei Wo, the prefect of Qi Prefecture (in modern Huanggang, Hubei), is negotiating a peaceful submission to Tang authority late in 876.

Under Wang Duo's insistence, Emperor Xizong commissions Wang Xianzhi an officer of the imperial Left Shence Arm and delivers the commission to Qi Prefecture.

However, Huang, who does not receive a commission as part of this arrangement, grows angry at Wabng’s perceived sellout.

He batters Wang Xianzhi on the head, and the rebel soldiers also clamor against the arrangement.

Wan, fearing the wrath of his own army, turns against Pei and pillages Qi Prefecture.

However, the rebel army afterwards breaks up into two groups, with one group following Wang Xianzhi and Shang Junzhang, and one group following Huang Chao.

An inscription made in 876 at Gwalior, India, contains a symbol indicating the absence of a number, but the Indians, like the contemporary Mayans and the classical Greeks and Romans, do not make mathematical use of such symbols.

Thus, the introduction of zero into Arabic and Hindu mathematics as an actual working tool is a revolutionary development.

Abu Ishaq Ibrahim is the son of the Aghlabid emir Ahmad of Ifriqiya.

After his father's death in 863, the emirate of Ifriqiya had passed to his father's brother Ziyadat Allah II, but he died shortly after, and the succession had passed back to the main line, to Ibrahim's brother Abu 'l-Gharaniq Muhammad II, who proves to be a frivolous and pleasure-loving ruler.

During his brother's emirate, Ibrahim had been assigned the governorship of Kairouan, an office he had executed with exemplary efficiency and seriousness, which had earned him much admiration.

Hopes were high when the dissolute Muhammad II died prematurely in February 875 and the emirate had passed to Ibrahim II, his candidacy pushed forward by popular crowds and endorsed by the jurists of Kairouan, who had set aside the claims of his young nephew, the son of Muhammad II.

Although Ibrahim II had inherited a kingdom depopulated by the plague of 874, his reign is economically prosperous.

He revives the religious police and is said to have rid the roads of banditry and secured the safety of commerce.

He seeks to develop agriculture by building up the irrigation system.

Among his public works, Ibrahim completes the Zaytuna mosque of Tunis, enlarges the Uqba mosque of Kairouan, builds a vast new water reservoir for the city, erects the walls of Sousse, and establishes a line of new naval signal towers along the Ifriqiyan coast (it reportedly takes one night to dispatch a message from Ceuta in Morocco to Alexandria in Egypt).

Louis is preparing for war when he dies at Frankfurt on August 28, 876.

He is buried at the abbey of Lorsch, leaving three sons and three daughters.

His sons, unusually for the times, respect the division made a decade earlier and each contents himself with his own kingdom.

Considered by many to be the most competent of the grandsons of Charlemagne, Louis in the face of the attacks of Vikings, Slavs, and others had obtained for his kingdom a certain degree of security.

He lived in close alliance with the Church, to which he was very generous, and entered eagerly into schemes for the conversion of his heathen neighbors.

Halfdan moves north to attack the Picts, while Guthrum emerges as the war leader in the south; joined in 876 by additional forces, they win the Battle of Wareham.