Plague and Contagion
Plague and Contagion
by Justin K. Stearns
Historians traditionally have divided the occurrence of the bubonic plague (Yersinia Pestis) into three pandemics that date roughly to 541–750, 1347–1722, and 1894–present.
In c. 638, during the initial expansion of Muslim armies into Syria that led to the conquest of Jerusalem, the plague struck the Muslim forces, killing many of them. This encounter, referred to in Muslim sources as the plague of ʿAmwas, figured prominently in the later materials related to plague and contagion. These accounts were collected in the compendiums of Prophetic tradition (ḥadīth) and chronicles of the history of the Muslim community that were compiled from the eighth to the tenth centuries. In brief, the accounts, many if not most of which took the form of Prophetic traditions, can be summarised as follows: plague had been a punishment for earlier peoples, but was a mercy for Muslims, and if they died from it, they received the reward of martyrdom. Still, Muslims should not enter a land where they knew plague was present, nor should they leave a place where it had broken out. One of the Prophet’s companions related this last tradition to the second caliph ʿUmar (d. 644), who, when approaching Syria from the Ḥijāz during the plague of ʿAmwas, decided to return instead to Madīna. Challenged by other Companions that he was fleeing from what God had decreed for him, ʿUmar responded that he was fleeing from the decree of God to the decree of God...
Left: The end of a plague tract that, according to the colophon shown here, was completed on 19 Rabi‘ II 944 (= 26 September 1537). The author is apparently the same as the Malakite theologian Abū ‘Abd Allāh Muḥammad ibn Muḥammad ibn al-Ḥaṭṭāb al-Malikī al-Ru‘aynī who died in 1547/954. The undated copy appears to have been made during the author's lifetime and is possibly in his own hand. (Source)
In the middle of the fourteenth century, plague struck Central Asia and then spread throughout the countries bordering the Mediterranean. In subsequent decades it returned repeatedly, becoming an accepted if not anticipated fact of life for millions of people. The demographic and economic effects were catastrophic for the Muslim as for the Christian world, with some areas possibly suffering as high as fifty percent mortality, although our knowledge of the demographic realities of this period is quite shaky. Our understanding of the broad impact of the plague on Muslim societies is clearer, although attention has been disproportionately directed to specific areas, Egypt most prominently, in direct relation to the quality of available sources. Owing to its agricultural production being based on an elaborate system of irrigation canals and the way land ownership and labour was regulated under the Mamluk dynasty (r. 1260-1517), Egypt’s economy went into a centuries-long decline following the plague. This was in stark contrast to England, where peasants were able to negotiate more favourable working conditions, and the economy and living standards improved substantially in the century following the initial plague outbreak. These different outcomes were the result of disparate social and economic and not religious factors...
Right: Gilles Le Muisit's painting depicts the mass burial of plague victims in Belgium. (Source)
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"Plague and Contagion" by Justin K. Stearns
~ Chapter Eleven, Pages 112-119 ~
~ Chapter Eleven, Pages 112-119 ~
1001 Cures Book tells the fascinating story of how generations of physicians from different countries and creeds created a medical tradition admired by friend and foe. It influences the fates and fortunes of countless human beings, both East and West.