THE COMPARATIVE COMMUNAL RESPONSES TO
THE
BLACK DEATH IN MUSLIM AND
CHRISTIAN SOCIETIES
by Michael W. Dols
In the middle of the fourteenth century a devastating
andemic of plague, commonly known in European history as the Black Death,
swept through the entire Mediterranean world.1 This cataclysmic
event caused a dramatic demographic decline in Muslim and Christian countries
and provoked definable communal responses.2
The impact of the pandemic
on Christian Europe is fairly well known since the Black Death has been the
subject of considerable scholarly attention.3 This interest has led
to a misconception of the Black Death as primarily a European phenomenon.
Regrettably, the Black Death in the Orient has not attracted a comparable
interest, but this neglect should not be interpreted as an indication of its
lack of historical significance.4 The famous fourteenth-
-------------------
1 This study is based, in part, upon a more extensive
investigation of the transmission and impact of the Black Death on Muslim
societies in the Middle East, North Africa, and Spain.
The effects of plague in Muslim society naturally afford further material
for comparison with the European experience, particularly with
regard to economic and demographic consequences.
2 At the outset, there is a need for caution because
of the lack of research on the demographic history of the Middle East. It
is impossible to prove that the dramatic differences
in the contemporary reactions of Muslim and Christian societies were due to
a marked difference in population decline. It is improbable, in
my opinion, that there was a greater decline in European population
which would have caused greater social tension and alarm. A general assessment
of the etiological conditions for plague in
the Middle East would tend to suggest the opposite.
3 The extensive literature on the European phase of the Black Death, with
special attention to Great Britain, has been conveniently summarized by three
recent works: Philip Ziegler, The
Black Death (London 1969) with a helpful bibliography, George Deaux, The Black Death 1347 (London 1969), and
J. F. D. Shrewsbury, A
History of Bubonic Plague in the British Isles (Cambridge 1970). On the
subject of communal reaction, see especially Stephen d’Irsay, “Defense Reactions
during the Black Death, 1348-1349” Annals
of Medical History 9 (1927) 169-179.
4 The pertinent works on plague in the Middle East include: Gaston Wiet’s
translation of three historical texts dealing with the Black Death in Egypt
(“La grande peste noire en Syrie et en Egypte,”
Atudes d’orientalisme d~di~es ~i la rn~moire de L~vi-Proveni~al
1 (Paris
century Muslim historian, Ibn Khaldun, who lost his
parents and a number of his teachers during the Black Death in Tunis,
recognized the import of the pandemic for Islamic civilization:
in the middle of the eighth
[fourteenth] century, civilization in the East and West was visited by a
destructive plague which devastated nations and caused populations to vanish.
It swallowed up many of the good things of civilization and wiped them out. It
overtook the dynasties at the time of their senility, when they had reached the
limit of their duration. It lessened their power and curtailed their influence.
It weakened their authority. Their situation approached the point of annihilation
and dissolution. Civilization decreased with the decrease of mankind. Cities
and buildings were laid waste, roads and way signs were obliterated,
settlements and mansions became empty, dynasties and tribes grew weak. The
entire inhabited world changed. The East, it seems, was similarly visited
though in accordance with and in proportion to (the East’s more affluent)
civilization. It was as if the voice of existence in the world had called out
for oblivion and restriction, and the world had responded to its call.5
The pandemic was transmitted
from central Asia and spread throughout the Middle East, North Africa, and
Europe. Based on contemporary Arabic
-----------------
1962) 367-384); David Ayalon’s (Neustadt) study of
“The Plague and Its Effects upon the Mamluk Army,” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society (1946) 67-73; Abraham Udovitch’s
interpretation of the economic decline of Mamlilk Egypt due partially to plague
(R. Lopez, H. Miskimin, and A. Udovitch, “England to Egypt, 1350-1500: Long-Term
Trends and Long-Distance Trade,” Studies in the Economic History of the Middle East ed. by M. A. Cook
(London 1970) 3. 93-128; and Jacqueline Sublet’s study of the plague treatise
of the Egyptian jurist Ibn Hajar al-’Asqal~ni (“La peste prise aux rets de
la jurisprudence: Le traite d’Ibn Ilajar al-’ Asqalani sur la peste,” Studia Islamica 33 (Paris 1971) 141-149).
In addition, particular attention is drawn to population decline in the Middle
East, attributable in part to plagues, in Eliyahu Ashtor’s Histoire des prix et des salaires dans l’orient
medieval (Paris 1969). I would like to express my gratitude especially
to Dr. Udovitch and Dr. Sublet for their very generous encouragement and advice
on this topic. As for the older literature, Jean Marchika announced an exhaustive
study of plague epidemics from the Black Death to modern times in his introduction
to La peste en Afrique septentrionale
(Algiers 1927) 10. This thesis was to form only a part of the larger work;
I have been unable to locate the author’s proposed study. The historical studies
on plague epidemics by pre-twentiethcentury scholars were severely handicapped
by their ignorance of the actual pathology of plague, which was discovered
only at the end of the nineteenth century. These include:
Ibn Khaldfln, The
Muqaddimah, trans. F. Rosenthal (Princeton 1967) 1. 64.
COMMUNAL RESPONSES TO THE BLACK
DEATH 271
and Latin sources, we can be certain of the existence
of the three major forms of plague (bubonic, pneumonic, and septicaemic) in
these regions. In any historical comparison of the role of the pandemic in
Muslim and Christian societies we can assume as a constant the medical nature
of the disease itself. In addition, almost all of the medieval physicians
believed that the immediate cause of this disease was a pestilential miasma
or corruption of the air; this belief was broadly accepted in both societies
due to their common reliance on the theory of epidemics found in Hippocrates
and elaborated by Galen and Ibn Sina (Avicenna), the greatest medical authorities
for the fourteenthcentury physicians.6 Therefore, in the Oriental
and Western plague treatises there is similar advice for improving or changing
the air in a plague-stricken community.
This medical advice is only
one element of the defensive communal reactions of the two societies. A study
of the more general communal responses to the same sharply focused and
unavoidable stimulus is one way of arriving at a cross-section of cultural
values and practices at one moment in time.7 To delineate more
clearly the respective values and practices of late medieval European and
Middle Eastern societies at the time of the Black Death a comparative analysis
will be employed. Such an explicit comparison brings insights into the basic
natures of both cultures. In dealing with elusive social attitudes and their
communal expression, comparative analysis may guard against a parochial and
simplistic interpretation of human behavior.
----------------------
6 Hippocrates, Epidemics 1 and 3, ed. and trans. W. H.
S. Jones (New York 1923) 1.139-211; Galen, Medicorum
graecorum opera quae exstant, ed. C. G. Kuhn (Leipzig
1821-1833)
77 The psychological impact of
historical disasters, such as the Black Death, was the topic of William L.
Langer’s presidential address to the American Historical Association
in 1957:
After reviewing the European
Christian understanding of the Black Death and the remarkable reactions to
it, I shall give fuller attention to the less well known Muslim responses
to the disaster. It will become evident that the European Christian and the
Muslim reactions were quite dissimilar, and the comparison of these differences
tells us much about what is essential to the identity of each culture. Faced
with the specter of death in a particularly horrible form, the values and
attitudes around which lives were constructed met their severest test. We
shall be compelled to examine the religious roots of each culture to understand
better their differing responses.
The Black Death was variously
interpreted by contemporary European writers. The pandemic was considered,
however, by most European observers to result directly from the pestilential
miasma, and it was believed that the disease was contagious, which accounts
for the important protective measures taken by the Italian cities and the
widespread advocacy of flight as the best means of escaping the epidemic.
The physicians mention natural causations of the disease (such as an unfavorable
conjunction of the planets, or earthquakes) among the remote causes of the
miasma. Yet only one European treatise gives a concrete remedy against the
astrological causes of plague; the customary recommendations were flight and
prayer8
The most commonly held opinion
about the ultimate cause of the plague pandemic was religious: the European
Christian viewed the Black Death as an overwhelming punishment from God for
his sins and those of his fellow Christians. Despite the other interpretations
of the disease, this view is the only one that satisfactorily explains the
extraordinary forms of communal behavior that took place in many parts of
Europe during the Black Death. This supernatural solution was propagated by
the Church and is reflected in contemporary European art and literature.9
The chronicles of the fourteenth century almost always attribute the
affliction to divine retribution for the wickedness of European society.10
Langland summarizes the common view succinctly: “These pestilences were
for pure sin.”’-’
--------------------------
8 Campbell (n. 6 above) 65.
Professor Campbell’s monograph is devoted, in part, to an examination of the
opinions on the Black Death by contemporary European physicians.
Although instructive about medical theory and practice, this examination is
highly restrictive and cannot be said to reflect the general European interpretation
of the disease. The physicians’ views should be balanced by other sources
such as chronicles, sermons, vernacular literature, and art.
Johannes Nohi, The
Black Death (London 1961) 78-79; Raymond Crawfurd, Plague and Pestilence in Literature and Art (Oxford 1914).
10 Ziegler (n. 3 above) 35.
Based directly on biblical
and classical precedents,12 a conviction of personal guilt and
a need for individual and collective expiation were engendered in the faithful
Christian. His attitude to the Black Death is well illustrated by the European
communal response. This response took the forms of the flagellant movement,
the persecution of alien groups (particularly the Jews), and a pessimistic
preoccupation with imminent death.
The flagellant movement was
based on a belief in the mortification of the flesh as suitable penance for
men’s sins. Beginning in mid-thirteenth-century Italy, a series of natural
disasters convinced many that God’s wrath was visiting men as a punishment
for their sinfulness. This concept was acted out in expiatory pilgrimages
and processions in an attempt to divert or allay God’s chastisement. The processions
recurred continually during the later Middle Ages.13 From their
inception, an implicit element of the flagellant movement was its participation
in the millennial ideas that Professor Cohn has shown to be a significant
theme of late medieval Christendom, stemming especially from the millennial
scheme of Joachim of Fiore.14 Self-flagellation was “a collective
irnilatio Christi, a redemptive
sacrifice which protected the world from final overwhelming catastrophe, and
by virtue of which they themselves [the flagellants] became a holy ~lite.”15
During the Black Death this
holy elite became a messianic crusade without a putative messiah. A recent
historian of the Black Death in Europe has described the movement in the following
manner:
As the fervor mounted the messianic pretensions of the Flagellants became
more pronounced. They began to claim that the movement must last for thirty-three
years and end only with the redemption of Christendom and the arrival of the
Millennium. Possessed by such chiliastic convictions they saw themselves more
and more, not as mortals suffering to expiate their own sins and humanity’s,
but as a holy army of Saints.16
The flagellant movement was
a complex social phenomenon. Its apocalyptic ambitions proved to be an
incentive to personal mysticism, anticlericalism, and social revolutionary
ideas such as the destruction of private wealth. The flagellants were also
intimately associated with the second major feature of the European reaction to
the pandemic: the persecution of the Jews.
---------------------
12 See L. Fabian Hirst, The Conquest of Plague (Oxford 1953) 6-16.
Despite Hirst’s misinformation and errors about plague in Muslim society,
his work is the best medical history of plague.
13 Ziegler (n. 3 above) 87-88;
Norman Cohn, The Pursuit of the Millennium,
rev. ed. (New York 1970) 127-147.
14 Cohn (n. 13 above) 108-113;
see the recent study by Marjorie Reeves, The
Influence of Prophecy in the Later Middle Ages: A Study in Joachimism (Oxford
1969).
15
Cohn 142.
16 Ziegler (n. 3 above) 92.
274
The massacres of the Jews during
the Black Death were unprecedented in their extent and ferocity until the
twentieth century. The first attacks on the Jews resulted from the accusation
that this unassimilable community had caused the pestilence by poisoning wells;
this was neither new (Jews had been accused and massacred in southern France
and Spain during the plague epidemics of 1320 and 1333), nor confined to
the Jews alone. Lepers, gravediggers and other social outcasts, Muslims in
Spain, or any foreigners were liable to attack; the hunting down of plague
salvers continued well into the seventeenth century. But in September 1348
the forced confessions from ten Jews in Chillon were adduced to support this
fantasy and to implicate all European Jews.’7 A second wave of
massacres from the middle of 1349 was instigated by the propaganda of the
flagellants. In many cities of Germany and the Low Countries (Frankfort,
Maine, Cologne, Brussels) the destruction of the Jewish population was led
by the flagellants, aided by the masses of the poor.’8 Pope Clement
VI finally condemned the flagellants in 1349 after two bulls in the same year
against the persecution of the Jews had been ineffectual.
Besides the immediate economic
and social causes that have been pointed out for the Jewish persecution,19
one must also consider the image of the Jew as Anti-Christ which was
commonplace in Europe during the later Middle Ages. As closely related to
Christian millennial ideology as the reverse is to the obverse, this image
was fostered by the Catholic Church and gained considerable momentum from
the time of the First Crusade. At its origin was a predisposition to seek
a weak, unpopular, and easily identifiable scapegoat as the source of evil—the
enemy of militant Christendom.
In general. European Christians
reacted to the Black Death with profound guilt and fear, which religious attitudes
about the mortification of the flesh of Len transformed into extreme penance;
there seems to have been a deep pessimism and sometimes a renunciation of.
life itself.20 Professor Huizinga has suggested that the whole
“vision of death” found in late fourteenth and fifteenth-century European
literature may be described by the word macabre, and it is from this late medieval period that we derive the
meaning of macabre as something
gruesome and morbid.21 The awareness of imminent death and of the
transitory nature of life is extrarodinarily prominent in late medieval documents,
as seen in testaments and endowments.22 It is not illogical, however,
to find the opposite reaction of hedonism as a form of release from this
---------------------------
17 The analysis by H. B. Trevor-Roper,
The European Witch-Craze of the Sixteenth
and Seventeenth Centuries and Other Essays (New York 1969) 90-192, is
remarkably suitable to the interpretation
of this “craze.. ~ Cohn (n. 13 above) 139.
19 Ziegler (n. 3 above)
97-109.
20 Ibid. 274-276; Millard Meiss, Painting
in Florence and Siena after the Black Death (New York 1964) 74-78; J.
Huizinga, The Waning of the Middle Ages
(New York 1954) 27-52; Langer, “The Next
Assignment” (n. 7 above) 298.
21 Huizinga 138-151.
22 Campbell (n. 6 above) 171-174.
danse macabre.
Moreover,
the natural inclination of survivors to escape the contagion by fleeing from
a plague-stricken region was encouraged by European physicians and clerics.
The pandemic brought to the fore the discontinuous view of human existence
in Christianity, that is, the end of all things in the Apocalypse.
In the complex psychological
response to the Black Death, the natural preoccupation with death was therefore
not inconsistent with a vision of the biblical Apocalypse. Many believed that
the end of the world had come, plague being the apocalyptic rider on the white
horse. In an account of the island of Cyprus during the pandemic, an Arabic
chronicler testifies to the Christian belief by his remark that the Christian
Cypriots “feared that it was the end of the world.”23 The Black
Death did not create these forms of reaction or the ideology that lay behind
them; it was a stimulus, despite its irregularity of attack, which exposed the
nerve system of late medieval Christian society.
The Middle Eastern
interpretations of the Black Death display a diversity of opinions similar to
that of the European accounts.24 Yet, the dominant Muslim view of
plague was set forth in the formulation of three religio-legal principles,
which directly affected communal behavior: (1) plague was a mercy from God and
a martyrdom for the faithful Muslim; (2) a Muslim should not enter nor flee
from a plague-stricken land; and (3) there was no contagion of plague since
disease came directly from God.25 These three major precepts
regarding plague were inherited by Muslim scholars at the time of the Black
Death from earlier experiences of plague epidemics. The recurrences of the
Plague of Justinian, beginning in the mid-sixth century, struck the Middle East
during the early, formative period of Islamic civilization.26 These
plagues,
--------------------
23 Al-Maqrizi, as-Suli2k li-ma’
rifat duwal al-mulOk (Cairo 1936-1958) 2.3.776.
24 This discussion of the Islamic
interpretation of plague is based primarily on my study of the corpus of plague
treatises written by the Muslim jurists and the relevant
/iadith literature; a survey of the Arabic
treatises was read to the meeting of the American Oriental Society at Harvard
University, April 7, 1971 (“The Arabic
Manuscript Sources for the History of Plague from the Black Death to the
Nineteenth Century”).
25 See Sublet (n. 4 above);
Dr. Sublet has investigated the Islamic juristic principles regarding plague
based on the most complete and representative Arabic plague
treatise:
26 Most of the Arabic plague
treatises include a chronology of plagues following the Plague of Justinian
in the Middle East, in addition to a consideration of the biblical
plagues. For an introduction to the history of the Plague of Justinian, see
J. N. Biraben and J. LeGoff, “La peste dans le haut moyen Age,” Anna les: economies, socWt~s, civilisations
24.6 (Paris 1969) 1484-1510. Von Kremer’s study of epidemics in the Middle
East is based largely on his edition of one plague
treatise and its chronology, as-SuyfitI’s MO rawdhu 1-wO’ iln ft akhbdr at-id’ (in (n.
4 above) 144-156. This treatise is a greatly abridged version of Ibn
which vitally affected the early Muslim conquests,
caused the creation of this fund of opinions that were later collected in
the form of legal traditions Q~awMilh).27
All three traditions were
attributed to the Prophet. Mul~ammad was reputed to have prohibited flight
from a plague-stricken community, and this belief was the subject of
considerable controversy between the caliph and his military commander in Syria
when plague struck the Arab army severely at ‘Amw~s in 17-18/638-639. The
prevalence of the other two principles cannot be established so firmly in this
early period but were fully established by the later Muslim jurists in the
eighth and ninth centuries. Accordingly, Muhammad was understood to have
denied the pre-Islamic Arab belief in contagion. Consistent with this idea that
plague was a divine selection is the principle that plague was a mercy from God
for the faithful Muslim but a punishment for the infidel. While the latter was
based on biblical sources, the claim for a mercy and martyrdom was a major
theological invention of Islam and is, to my knowledge, unique to Semitic
religions. In the variable lists of the five Muslim martyrdoms, deaths by
plague and by battle are always included; both are equal in God’s favor and the
believer is assured of reaching paradise. Moreover, the descriptive terminology
of plague is closely related to that of the actual fih~id or holy war. The ideology of the jihad may have served as a
---------------------
~ajar al-’AsqalAni’s (as-Suy5~i’s
teacher) Badhl al-md’iln ft fadl af4d’iln, DAr al-Kutub (Cairo) MS no.
2353 tasawwuf and Ibn AM ~ajalah’s
Daf’ an-niqmah ft 5-saldf
‘aId na ar-rahmdn, Escurial MS no. 1772, fols. la-87b. The chronology
of epidemics by as-Suyi4! was brought up to his own time; the work was composed
during the plague epidemic of 897/1491-1492 in Egypt. Von Kremer’s emended
chronology of the years of epidemics (107-143)——not necessarily plague—suggests
the possible incidents of plague in the Middle East after the Plague of Justinian.
For the first important plague epidemic in Islamic history, the “Plague
of ‘AmwAs (‘AmawAs),” see at-Tabari, Ta’rikh
(Cairo 1960-1969) 4.60, and The
Encyclopaedia of Islam, ed. 2 (Leiden 1960- ): “‘AmwAs” (J. Sourdel- Thomine);
hereafter referred to as El 2 (El 1
refers to The Encyclopaedia of Islam, ed. 1 ILeiden
1913-19341).
A fuller discussion
of this topic will be found in my article “Plague
in Early Islamic History” which will appear in the Journal
of the American Oriental Society 94.3.
27 See A. J. Wensinck, Concordance et indices de Ia tradition musulmane
22 (Leiden 1936) 2-4; esp. the traditions citied in al-BukhAri, Kitdb al-/Omi’ as-~aJgi~ (Leiden
1864) 2.209 and 4.59-60. Apparently the
earliest and most important history of plagues and the related had iths was composed by al-Mad&’ini (d. 225/840
or 231/845); the work is lost but was incorporated into the writings of Ibn
Abi d-DunyA’s (d. 281/894) Kitdb aI-i’tibdr,
which was utilized by the later writers.
The ~iadtth literature furnished
the late medieval authors with a precise Arabic terminology for plague, and
it is this. hadith literature that
constitutes the bulk of the material found
in the plague treatises written from the time of the Black Death. Parallel
to this development was a medical interest in plague which can
be traced from the early Arabic medical compendia based on the medical views
of Hippocrates and Galen; for example, ‘AlI ibn Rabban at-Tabari, Firdausu
l-Hikmat or Paradise of Wisdom, ed.
M. Z. Siddiqi (Berlin 1928) 328-331, and Max Meyerhof, “‘All at-Tabari’s ‘Paradise
of Wisdom,’ One of the Oldest Arabic Compendiums
of Medicine,” Isis 16 (1931) 31,
51.
COMMUNAL RESPONSES TO THE
BLACK DEATH
conscious and useful analogy for the Muslims jurists
when they were confronted by the problems of plague and of explaining the
traditions of the Prophet.
It would be unreasonable to
assume that these three religio-legal tenets were universally characteristic
of the Muslim response to the Black Death. While there was no question that
the ultimate cause of plague was divine, the legal scholars argued both for
and against these precepts in their plague treatises.28 As for
the first principle, there is historical and literary evidence that plague
was considered by some men as a warning or punishment by God, arising perhaps
from natural human anxiety and native Christian and Jewish attitudes. The
chroniclers relate the enforcement of Muslim laws, particularly against alcohol
and moral laxity, during the plague epidemics of the fourteenth and fifteenth
centuries.29 There is an obvious incompatability between the beliefs
in plague as a divine punishment and as a divine reward. Within this spectrum
of beliefs there was also the view that plague was a natural calamity—a neutral
event—which an unknowable God had decreed. The latter interpretation is most
consistent with the historical accounts and represents the “consensus” of
the jurists and popular attitudes. As for the unique theological claim that
plague was a mercy and martyrdom, it may have been both comforting and confounding
for the distressed Muslim; it had the virtue of preserving the belief in a
compassionate and merciful God. At the very least, there was no unanimity
of opinion about the specific reason for plague; this lack of agreement eliminated
the possibility of a single ideological basis for social activism
Much the same may be said
for the issue of flight from a plague-stricken community. Some jurists
disagreed with the prohibition against fleeing, and there is historical
evidence that clearly shows that there was flight from the countryside to the
major cities. This might be explained by the attraction of food reserves in the
cities (considering the long duration of the Black Death) and the opportunity
to escape from the land and to obtain higher wages in the cities. Furthermore,
the dispensing of plague prophylaxes and the organized religious ceremonies at
the principal shrines in the urban areas may have exerted an attraction over
the rural population. In any case, the Black Death and the recurrent plagues
accelerated a pattern of rural depopulation which was perceptible to Arabic
historians in the following century and a half. In contrast, there was
certainly flight from the cities as well; we are told, for example, that the
people of Fust~.t (Old Cairo) during the Black Death fled
--------------------------
28 See n. 24 above.
29 Ibn Hajar (n. 26 above) fols.
6a-7a, 122b; Ibn Abi Hajalah, (n. 26 above) fols. 42a-43a; Ibn Hajar, Inbd’ al-ghumr bi-anbd’ al’-umr (Cairo
1969) 1.351; al- Maqrizi (n. 23 above)777;Jean
Sauvaget, “D~crets mamelouks de Syrie,” Bulletin
d’~tudes orientales 2 (Damascus 1932) 11-15, 24.
eastward from the city, leaving it in ruins.30
The sultan and his amirs also fled from Cairo to Siry~iqtis and remained
there from the beginning of Rajab 749/25 September 1348~’ until the end of
Ramadan/22 December.32 Yet, despite the enormous problems created
by the pandemic, there is no evidence to suggest that the machinery of government
and religion broke down altogether in the most important cities such as Damascus,
Cairo, or Alexandria. The historical accounts of the attempts by the government
to count the dead either in the mosques or at the city gates argue strongly
in favor of the maintenance of urban functions and activity. The popular
religious ceremonies also argue against massive flight from the urban regions
and the belief in contagion. Edward Lane, a keen observer of traditional Muslim
society, noted that during the severe plague epidemic of 1835 in Cairo—for
which he notes no unusual popular reaction—that “from a distrust in fate some
Muslims even shut themselves up during the prevalence of plague, but this
practice is generally condemned. A Syrian friend of mine who did so nearly
had his door broken open by his neighbors.”33
As for the third problem of
contagion, the Andalusian scholar Ibn al-Kha~ib has attracted European
attention for his observation and forceful statement of the contagious nature
of the Black Death.M This points, however, to the exceptional nature of Ibn
al-Khatib’s belief and the weight of opinion against him. Ibn al-Khatib was the
only Muslim writer to my knowledge to argue against the accepted interpretation
of plague; his forthright statement is probably one of the portions of his
writings which gave support to his enemies in their later persecution of him as
a heretic.
-------------------------
30 A1-Maqrizi, al-Mawd’iz wal-i’tibdr
bi-dhikr al-khi~af wal-athdr (Bfll~q 1854) 1.637; see his similar remarks
for the at-Tabb~nah section of Cairo, near the Citadel,
during the Black Death (1.361).
31 Al-Maqrizi
(n. 23 above) 780; al-Maqrizi clearly states (781) that after the funeral
of ‘Abdall~h Manufi in Cairo (Ramacl~n 749 AH) “the amirs returned to Siryaqos”;
cf. Ayalon (n. 4 above) 72.
32 Al-Maqrizi (n. 23 above)
781.
~ Edward Lane, Arabian Society
in the Middle Ages ed. Stanley Lane-Poole (London 1883) 10. For the same
plague epidemic in the Middle East, we have the travel account of A. ~V.
Kinglake, Eothen (Lincoln Nebraska
1970 reprint), which is virtually “A Journal of the Plague Year.” Kinglake
observed, particularly, the severe mortality in Cairo and the traditional
Muslim practices. Compared with the massive flight of the Europeans due to
their obsession with contagion, “the Orientals. . . have more quiet fortitude
than Europeans under afflictions of this sort, and they never allow the plague
to interfere with their religious usages” (250-251). ‘There were no outward
signs of despair nor violent terror” (268).
~‘ Ibn al-Khatib, Muqni’ at as-sd’il ‘an al-marad al-hd’il, Escurial
MS no. 1785, fols. 39a-48b; the text has been edited by M. J. Muller in the Sitzungsberichte der Kdnigl. Bayerischen
Akademie der Wissensehaf ten zu Miinchen (Munich 1863) 2. 1-34:
“Ibnulkhat!b’s Bericht uber die Pest.” See El
2: “Ibn aL-Khatib” (J. Bosch-VilA); Hirst (n. 12 above) 51; T. \V. Arnold
and A. Guillaume, eds., The Legacy of
Islam (Oxford 1931) 340; and Ulimana (n.6 above) 179, 246. For the European
views of contagion, see Campbell (n. 6 above) 56-63.
The importance of these three
principles to Muslim society was in what they did not affirm: they did not declare that plague was God’s punishment;
they did not encourage flight; and they did not support a belief in the contagious
nature of plague—all of which were prevalent in Christian Europe. These principles
appear to be borne out by the reports of the general communal responses to
the Black Death in the major cities in the Middle East.
The Muslim reaction to the
Black Death was characterized by organized communal supplication that included
processions through the cities and mass funerals in the mosques. There is
no indication of the abandonment of religious rites and services for the dead
but rather an increased emphasis on personal piety and ritual purity. Besides
the regular religious services in the mosques, the oral recitation of the
~aw3dith, particularly from the Sa of al-Bukh~ri,33
was a customary practice during the Black Death and later recurrences of plague.
Surely, at the time of the Black Death, the chapters that dealt specifically
with plague as well as related traditions were read aloud. The oral presentation
of the traditions must have effectively communicated to the illiterate masses
the three major tenets regarding plague.
It is reported that pious men
were stationed at various places of worship in Cairo and FustAt in order to
recite the funeral prayers. Many men left their normal occupations to profit
from the funerals, as by chanting the funeral prayers at the head of processions.~
These processions from the mosques or homes to the cemeteries filled the streets
of Cairo during the Black Death. They were so numerous that they could not
pass in the roadways without disturbing one another.37 Moreover,
there were pious visitations to the graves in the common belief that the souls
of the deceased resided in the tombs.
Mass funeral services took
place during the Black Death in the important mosques of the cities. For
example, an Egyptian historian tells us that on one Friday after the public
prayer in the large Mosque of al-I~I~kim in Cairo, the funeral prayers were
recited over a double line of coffins that reached from the maqs0rah~ to the main entrance. The im~m or prayer leader stood at the
threshold of the entrance door, and the people stood behind him on the outside
of the building.~
-----------------------
~ El 2: “al-Bukhkri” (J. Robson).
~ Al-Maqr!zi (n. 23 above) 781.
~ Ibid. 782.
~ A box or compartment for the ruler which was built near the mihrdb or prayer niche.
~‘ Al-MaqrizI (n. 23 above)
782. This report is probably based on the lost segment of the history of Ibn
al-Fur~t, a contemporary of the Black Death in Cairo; fortunately a brief part
of his description of the Black Death is preserved in Iba Ijajar (n. 26 above)
fols. 130a-130b. See also the report of Ibn Kathir, who witnessed the mass
funerals at the Umayyad Mosque in Damascus, in al-Bidayah wan-n ihdyah Ii at-ta’rikh (Cairo, n.d.) 14. 227-228.
During the Black Death and recurrent plague epidemics, the funeral services in
Cairo were used as one method by the government to determine general mortality.
See for example, Ibn Taghri Bird!, an-Nu
jam a~-$hirah Ii mulak Mi~r wal-Qdhirah, History of Egypt 1382-1469 A.D.,
Ibn Taghri Birdi, a major
historian of Mamhlk Egypt, gives a personal account of his life during the
severe plague epidemic of 833/1429-1430 in Cairo, which may be typical of the
educated urban class’s reaction to plague. He and his friends would return home
from the Friday prayer and the mass funerals, and they would take account of
how many were present among them to compare with the number on the following
Friday. Each man was resigned to die, Ibn Taghri Birdi relates, each having
made his will and repented. The young men carried prayer beads in their hands
and did little apart from attending the prayers for the dead, performing the
five daily prayers, weeping and directing their thoughts to God, and showing
humility.~
An important part of urban
activity in response to the Black Death was the communal prayers for the
lifting of the disease. During the greatest severity of the pandemic, orders
were given in Cairo to assemble in the mosques and to recite the recommended
prayers in common.4’ Fasting and processions took place in the
cities during the Black Death and later plague epidemics; the supplicatory
processions followed the traditional form of prayer for rain (is usq~’). As the Black Death
worsened, a proclamation was made in Damascus inviting the population to fast
for three days and to go out on the fourth day (Friday) to the Mosque of the
Foot, in order to supplicate God for the removing of this scourge.42 Most
of the Damascenes were reported to have fasted, and several spent the night in
the Umayyad Mosque performing the acts of faith as in the ritual during Rama n
and reading al-Bukh~rI. On Friday morning the inhabitants of Damascus came out
from all sides, including Jews, Christians, Samaritans, old men and women,
young infants, the poor, amirs, notables, and magistrates. Before the morning
prayer, they marched from the Umayyad Mosque to the Mosque of the Foot and did
not cease chanting the prayers throughout the day.43
------------------------
ed. and trans. William Popper, University of
California Publications in Semitic Philology (Berkeley and Los Angeles,
1915-1963) 18.71; 22.93-94.
40 Ibn
Taghri Bird! 18.72.
41 A
number of these prayers are suggested in the plague treatises; for example, Ibn
klajar (n. 26 above) fols. lOlb-119b. The prayers are mostly in the common form
of “seeking refuge” (ista’ddhah,
iltijd’ah) with God, based on portions of the Qur’an which are felt to be
efficacious against disease or hardship. Many of these verses are used for
inscriptions on amulets and talismans. See also Jan Knappert, Swahili lstamic Poetry (Leiden 1971)
1.87, and C. E. Padwick, Muslim Devotions
(London 1961) chap. 6.
42 See
Wiet (n. 4 above) 383 n. 38.
~ Iba KathIr (n. 39 above)
14.226; for other reports of the same event, see al-Maqrizi (n. 23 above) 780;
Ibn AM Ijajalah (n. 26 above) fols. 75a-75b; and Ibn Batt04ah, Voyages ed. and trans. C. Defremery and
B. R. Sanquinetti (Paris 1854) 1.227-229. There is an excellent description of
this ceremony in Cairo and its procession out to the desert during the plague
epidemic of 822 AH in al-Maqrizi, as-Sut0k,
Bodleian Or. MS no. 458, fols. 141a-142b and (with minor variations) in Ibn
Taghri Bird! (n. 39 above) 17.64-67. Although this
Another distinguishable characteristic
of the Muslim reaction to the pandemic was the occurrence of and belief in
supernatural visions and events associated with the disease. Previous to the
communal supplication in Damascus, a man had come from the mountains of Asia
Minor to visit the famous scholar and judge of the city, Bah~’ ad-DIn as-Subki,
and informed him that when plague had occured in Asia Minor, he had seen the
Prophet in a vision. The man had complained to Mul~ammad about this calamity
that had struck the people, and the Prophet declared to him: “Read the siirah
of Noah” 3,363 times45 and ask God to raise from you this affliction.”
This was announced in the city, and the people assembled in the mosques to
carry out these instructions.46 For a week the Damascenes performed
this ritual, praying and slaughtering great numbers of cattle and sheep, whose
meat was distributed among the poor.47 Similarly, a letter of the
governor of Aleppo arrived in Cairo informing the government that a pious
man had seen the Prophet in a dream. The man had also complained to the Prophet
about the plague, and the Prophet had given him a prayer to recite. A number
of copies of this prayer were made and sent to Uam~, Tripoli, and Damascus.48
Further examples of supernatural
events during the Black Death are to be found in the plague treatises.49
In all probability plague was a stimulus to popular veneration of saints~
as is evidenced in the modern Middle East at the time of natural calamities.
Thus, it was reported that during the Black Death the tombs of the prophet
Matt~ and Hanzalah ibn Khuwaylid (brother of Khadijah) were revealed to the
people of Manbij (in northern Syria). Streams of light were said to have shone
from the shrines of sheikh ‘Aqil al-Manbiji and sheikh Yanbub outside of the
city, and the light from them came over the city. Also, light came from the
tomb of sheikh ‘All and his shrine on the northern side of the town. The lights
passed from onto the other, and they came together and lasted for four nights
until the light blinded the people of Manbij. The judge of the city observed
this and gathered witnesses, and then he reported it to the provincial capital
of Meppo.6’ Similar supernatural
-------------------------------
ceremony included sacrifices, there are no reports
for the Black Death or later plagues of pre-Islamic animal sacrifices where an
animal would be used to transfer the evil from the plague-stricken community.
In such a ritual a camel might be led through parts of a town so that the beast
would attract the pestilence upon itself; then, the animal would be strangled
in a sacred place. For these rites, see J. Cheihod, Le sacrifice chez tes Arabes (Paris 1955) 123.
~ Qur’~n 71.
~ It should be 3,360 times,
according to al-Maqrizi (n. 23 above) 779.
46 Ibn
Kathir (n. 39 above) 14. 226.
~ AI-Maqrizi (n. 23 above) 779-780.
48 Ibid.
~ Ibn Hajar (n. 26 above)
fols. llOa-llOb.
~TIgnaz Goldziher, Muslim Studies ed. and trans. S. M.
Stern and C. B. Barber 2 (London 1971) 255-341.
~‘ Ibn al-Ward!, Tatim.mat aI-mukhtamr /i akhbdr al-bashar (Cairo, 1285 AH)
2.353-354.
phenomena may have been common in the countryside during
other plague epidemics; the Arabic chronicles and plague treatises, however,
are far more informative about urban activity and orthodox beliefs and relate
only extraordinary reports of rural events. It can be safely asserted, however,
that there was no development and official support for a common protector
against plague comparable to the cult of SainL Roch (or Saint Sebastian) in
Christian Europe.
The plague treatises also
attest to a large number of popular magical beliefs and practices concerning
plague, which should be interpreted as a significant element in the total
religious response of Muslim society. The amulets and talismans, incantations,
and magical inscriptions that were directed against plague were not unique
phenomena; they were only part of a vast body of magical beliefs and practices
that are more familiarly associated with the “evil eye.”62 In
general, the magical practices took the form of either specific prayers and
incantations (which should be said at a certain time and manner) or magical
objects, such as inscribed amulets. The inscriptions were comprised of magic
squares, cabalistic letters, and talismanic signs. Both the prayers and
inscriptions were based primarily on the use of the “divine names” of God (alasma’ al-4usnT),~ which have occult
properties. Most of the Arabic writers have drawn their information from the
major work on the magical use of these divine names by Ahmad ibn ‘All al-BunT
(d. 622/1125), entitled Shams al-ma arif
al~kubr7.M The magical practices emphasizes the popular belief that plague
was inflicted on mankind by evil jinn rather than as the result of the
corruption of the air.5~ The same belief in jinn as the vehicle of
plague was observed in Morocco at the beginning of this century.~
---------------------------
52 The
only example of an amulet specifically directed against an epidemic, to my
knowledge, is illustrated in Rudolf Kriss and Hubert Kriss-Heinrich, Volksgtaube im Bench des Islam (Wiesbaden
1960-1962) 2, p1. 78. IA and IR; description, 93. The common use of amulets
against plague and other diseases is noted but no examples are given in M.
Remand, Description des monuments
musutmans du cabinet de M. Le Duc de Blacas (Paris 1828) 1.62.
~ See El 2: “al-asm~’
al-husn&”’ (L. Gardet); Kriss and Kriss-Heinrich 68-71.
~ Ahmad ibn ‘All al-BOni, Shams
al-ma’dni/ at-kubrd (Cairo n.d.). On the topic of repulsing plague, see
4.74-75.
~ Ernst Zbin·den, Die Djinn des islam und der Alt onientatische Geistergtaube (Berne
1953)
75-96. Ibn
Hajar argues for the agency of the jinn against the common miasmatic theory of
plague which is found in most European and Oriental accounts (n. 26 above,
fols. iSa37a). Von Kremer maintains that the idea of the jinn as the vehicle
of plague had died out completely and was replaced by the idea of divine
punishment in the later Middle Ages (n. 4 above, 102); this is clearly denied
by Ibn Hajar’s discussion and the popular magical beliefs and practices.
56 Edward
Westermarck, Ritual and Belief in Morocco
(London 1926) 1.271. See also the interesting legend of an Egyptian peasant
and the plague-bearing jinn recounted in Renb Basset, Milte et un con tes, Mcits des Mgendes arabes (Paris 1924)
1.123-125.
The comparison of Christian
and Muslim societies during the Black Death points to the significant disparity
in their general communal responses. But has not the description of the Christian
reaction stressed the exceptional rather than the typical responses? For were
there not comparable magical beliefs and practices, religious services and
prayers? Undoubtedly there were, although mass communal funeral services,
processions, and journeys to the cemeteries were greatly limited by the common
European belief in contagion, as seen in the slaluli sanitari of the Italian cities,57 and the advisability
of flight.58 Conversely, the Arabic sources do not attest to the
“striking manifestations of abnormal collective psychology, of dissociation
of the group mind,”59 which occurred in Christian Europe. Fear
and trepidation of the Black Death in Europe activated what Professor Trevor-Roper
has called, in a different context, a European “stereotype of fear”;~ the
collective emotion played upon a mythology of messianism, anti-Semitism, and
man’s culpability for his sins.60
Why are the corresponding
phenomena not found in the Muslim reaction to the Black Death ‘61 The stereotypes did not
exist. There is no evidence for the appearance of messianic movements in Muslim
society at this time which might have associated the Black Death with an
apocalypse. In Islamic history the religious leader who heralds the final judgment
and the end of the world is known as the mahdr.
The doctrine and the growth of mahdist
movements usually gained adherence on the fringe of Muslim civilization and
are charecteristic of popular Muslim culture, for there is no dogma of an
all-encompasing expectation of an apocalypse in Sunny or orthodox Islam corresponding to its role in medieval
Christianity. Orthodox Islam, as opposed to ShY’ ism and other millennial
Muslim sects, has never developed a doctrine of an apocalypse.63
This feature of Islamic theology may be due to the lack of a Qur’~nic basis~
-------------------------------
~ E. Carpentier, Une vitte
devant Ia peste: Orvieto et la Peste Noire (Paris 1992) 131-134.
~ See, for example, ibid. 124-126 and W. M. Bowsky, “The Impact
of the Black Death upon Sienese Government and Society,” Specutum 39 (January 1964) 1-34. These
two excellent regional monographs represent the most profitable manner of
further investigation of the Black Death in Europe. They are based on very
rich archival material; unfortunately, comparable records are not extant
for the major cities of the Middle East and North Africa for the same period,
which places a severe limitation on similar research.
69 Hirst
(n. 12 above) 17.
60 Trevor-Roper
(n. 17 above) 165.
61 Ibid. 98, 185; demonology and
witchcraft may be added to this mythology.
62 Von
Kremer has attempted to minimize the differences between the reactions of
Christian and Muslim societies to the Black Death. While he concedes that
there was no persecution of Jews in the Orient, he
uncritically associates the religious fanaticism of the flagellants in Europe
with the dervish orders in Muslim society (n. 4 above,
102).
63 For the esoteric apocalyptical literature of the Shi’ah, see E12: “djafr” (T. Fahd).
64 See H. A. R. Gibb and J.
H. Kramers, Shorter Encyclopaedia of
Islam (Leiden 1953): “‘Isa.” (There
is no mention of the mahdi in the
Saliih of al-Bukh~ri or
Abs Muslim.)
MICHAEL W. DOLS
comparable to the Christian book of Revelation.65
In any case, our sources for the Black Death in the Middle East, North
Africa, and Spain were written, admittedly, mainly by the articulate urban
‘ulamti’ or religious scholars, but certainly
they would have been sepsitive to the development of messianic movements in
the hinterland, since they were generally opposed to violent socioreligious
innovation, not to say social revolution.66 Furthermore, the fact
that there was no certainty that plague was a divine punishment for sin removed
the impetus for a cohesive puritanical and revivalist popular movement.67
The impact of the Black
Death poses the question of the Muslim attitude toward minorities. The
unassimilated communities were tolerated in medieval Muslim society and, in
this instance, were not held responsible for the ravages of the pandemic.68
However theoretical, the legal tenet against contagion of
-----------------------
66 On
this point, the Book of Revelation was the least popular book of the New
Testament in Byzantine or Greek Christian theology; this may help to explain a
corresponding lack of apocalyptic expectations in the Byzantine chronicles,
either for the Plague of Justinian or the Black Death. Professor Trevor-Roper
suggests a similar contrast: the Greek Orthodox Church, unlike the Catholic
Church, “built up no systematic demonology and launched no witch-craze” (n. 17
above, 185). Moreover, there is a closer parallel between the fatalistic Muslim
attitude toward the disease and the Byzantine Greek concept of blind and
arbitrary tyche which directs the
affairs of men; see Speros Vryonis, The
Dec tine of Medieval Hellenism in Asia Minor and the Process of Islam izat ion
from the Eleventh through the Fifteenth Century (Berkeley 1971) 409, 418.
66 A.
N. Poliak, “Les r~voltes populaires en ~gypte ~ l’~poque des Mamelouks et leurs
causes ~conomiques,” Revue des etudes
islamiques 8 (Paris 1934) 255.
67 There
is a large literature on the history of millennial movements but very little
investigation of comparative Semitic (Christian, Judaic, and Muslim) messianic
movements. Particularly, the nature of apocalyptic doctrines and their relation
to millennial movements in Islam have not been the subject of any modem study.
A clear presentation of the popular belief in the mahdi in the fourteenth century, which includes its relation to sz2f i beliefs is given by Ibn Khaldfln
(n. 5 above) 2.156-200. See also Gibb and Kramers (n. 64 above) “al-Mabdi,”
“al-Dadjdj~l”; Eli: “al-kiyam5” (D.
B. Macdonald); M. G. S. Hodgson, “A Note on the Millennium in Islam,” Millennial Dreams in Action, ed. S. L.
Thrupp (New York 1970) 218-219; M. Galal, “Essal d’observations sur les rites
funeraires en ~gypte actuelle,” Revue des
etudes islamiques 11 (Paris 1937) 249-252; Ignaz Goldziher, Mohamed and Islam (New Haven 1917)
240-247 and bibliographical references to mahdist
doctrine 284; and L. C. Brown, “The Sudanese Mahdiya,” Protest and Power in Black Africa ed. Robert I. Rotberg and All A.
Mazrui (Oxford 1970), 145-168. For two mahdist
movements during the Main-16k Period, see Poliak (n. 66 above) 255-256.
68 There
were sumptuary laws against the ahl
al-dhimma (“people of the covenant” or protected non-Muslims) in the Middle
East, which were enforced with varying degrees of severity. During the MamlSk
period in Egypt and Syria, Jews and particularly Christians (Copts) were
subjected to increased discrimination and violence for various reasons. For a
review of the position of the dhimmjs in
the Mamlilk Period, see C. E. Bosworth, “Christian and Jewish Religious
Dignitaries in MamlOk Egypt and Syria: Qaiqashandi’s Information on Their
Hierarchy, Titulature and Appointment,” International
Journal of Middle Esta Studies (January 1972) 64-66; see also Poliak (n. 66
above) 269-271. For the general study
plague would have militated against the accusation
of the minorities. In no case is there a direct causal relationship to be found
between the Black Death (and subsequent plague epidemics) and the active
persecution of minorities as in Europe.69
The Christian belief in
plague as a divine punishment for men’s sins was preached by clergymen deeply
committed to the idea of original sin and man’s guilt arising from his
essential depravity, as well as to a fundamental contempt—both Christian and
Stoic—for this world. The Black Death was the occasion for the vigorous
realization of these ideas. However, there is no doctrine of original sin and
of man’s insuperable guilt in Islamic theology.70 The Muslim writers
on plague did not dwell on the guilt of their co-religionists even if they did
admit that plague was a divine warning against sin. Prayer was supplication
and not expiation.
In contrast, the general
reaction of Muslim society to the Black Death was governed by its
interpretation as only another common natural disaster. This was the view of
the majority of the ‘ulamW as
exemplified by the treatise of Ibn Hajar al-’ Asqal~nL7’ The Muslim
attitude toward the cataclysmic nature of plague seems to be more closely
related to the view found in Thucydides’s description of the “Athenian Plague”
rather than to the then contemporary European experience of the Black Death. A
comparison may be drawn between the use of language employed in the accounts of
plague in Thucydides and the Arabic historical sources, especially al-Maqrizi
and Ibn Taghri Birdi. The detailed descriptions are used to show the awful
power of the disease as an incalculable disaster that defies human reason and
control. Plague is revealed as a permanent aspect of the human condition; for
the Greeks, plague is pathos like
war.72 For the Muslims, this incalculable event is fated by God for
mankind, as are other diseases, droughts, or floods. It is possible to see in
the Muslim communal ceremonies, as well as the more popular belief in jinn and
the veneration of saints, a relatively successful defense against natural
anxiety and guilt for having survived the death of others: a stereotype of
-------------------------------
of dhimmi
status, see E12: “dhimma” (C.
Cahen) and S. D. Goitein, A Mediterranean
Society 2 (Berkeley and Los Angeles 1971) chap. 7: “Interfaith Relations,
Communal Autonomy, and Government Control.”
69 See
Ibn Taghri Birdi, who was strongly in favor of discriminatory practices, for
instances of sumptuary legislation: (n. 39 above) 17.67-69; 18.5; 19.109,
125, 137; 23.56. M. Perlmann, “Notes on Anti-Christian
Propaganda in the MamlOk Empire,” Bulletin
of the School of Oriental and African Studies 10 (London 1942) 854,
discusses a case of incendiarism at the beginning of the year of the Black
Death in Syria (749 AH), which is taken from an anti-Christian tract by al-Asnawi
(d. 772/1370); there does not appear to be any relation
between the two events.
70 See
Georges C. Anawati, “La notion de ‘p~ch~ originel’ existe-t-elle dans I’
Islam?” Studia Islamica 31(1970)
29-40.
71 Sublet
(n. 4 above) 148.
72 See
A. Parry, “The Language of Thucydides’ Description of the Plague,” Institute of Classical Studies, Bulletin 16
(University of London 1969) 106-118.
submission to divine order. From a modern point of
view, the cessation of feeling or “psychic numbing” may be said to have characterized
the life-style of the survivors.73
It may rightly be asked
whether we can really explain the apparently pacific, collective, and
controlled Muslim reaction to the Black Death as largely the result of
theoretical theological principles. There is good reason to believe that we
can. The essential vehicle between theory and practice was the communal
leadership of the ‘ulami’ who were
not only the religious ~lite but also the social and administrative elite in
the late medieval Muslim city.74 It is instructive that, unlike
contemporary European treatises,75 the Muslim tracts are not
primarily the work of physicians but are the work of this communal dlite. The
Muslim and Christian treatises testify to a further contrast in the
intellectual authority of the two religious establishments over their societies
during a period of acute crisis. On the whole, one is struck by the fact that
the interpretations and arguments of the Muslim jurists take fuller cognizance
of the beliefs and practices of their community than the European treatise
writers.76 For example, the latter are almost entirely silent about
the persecution of the Jews77 and the flagellant movement. The ‘ulanu7.’ in Muslim society were able to
formulate normative attitudes and to guide the popular reaction toward the
Black Death.
In this regard, the
sixteenth-century plague treatise of the Ottoman jurist T~shkopruz~de (d.
968/1560) is particularly instructive. In his discussion of the question of
flight from a plague epidemic, he states as usual that changing the air was
most desirable during a plague epidemic because of the common belief in plague
miasma; the author recommends that one should go to a place where the disease
is ordinarily not to be expected. Due consideration must be given to certain
conditions, however, such as not violating the requirements of civil
responsibilities (al-huqiiq al-madaniyah)
or the social ties within the
---------------------
73 Robert Lifton, Death in Life (New
York 1969) 500, 503.
~ See the excellent
sociological description of the ‘ulamd’ during
the MamlOk Period by Ira Lapidus, Muslim
Cities in the Later Middle Ages (Cambridge, Mass. 1967) 107-115, 130-142;
see also M. G. S. Hodgson, “Islam and Image,” History of Religions 3(1964) 232-233, 236.
74 See Campbell (n. 6 above)
6-92.
76 A
careful scrutiny of the legal treatises of the ‘utamd’ demonstrates the active application of Muslim scholarship
to the problems arising from a plague-stricken community. For this reason, I
take strong exception to von Kremer’s interpretation of the Muslim treatises as
proof of the decadent intellectual rigidity of late medieval Islam (n. 4 above
94-98). Von Kremer disregards the contemporary European views of plague and the
fact that similar questions were being posed. The clerics of the Reformation, most
notably Martin Luther, argued whether a Christian should flee from plague or
whether his duty was to remain and trust in God. Furthermore, a good deal of
von Kremer’s criticism of Muslim society was based on the erroneous belief that
plague was caused by miasma.
77 S. Guershberg, “La
controverse sur les pr~tendus semeurs de la Peste Noire d’apr~s les trait~s de
peste de l’~poque,” Revue des dudes
juives 8 n.s. (1948) 3-40.
family. Further, obedience to the decision of the communal
leader (mukhldr) with regard to
moving away or remaining must be preserved. If changing the air by flight
cannot be undertaken because: (1) the epidemic is universal; (2) the fear
that the plague victims would be neglected; or (3) the need to preserve the
commonweal of the community (which is an essential tenet of Islam) from disruption
and disorder, the people are simply to remain and improve their circumstances
by cleaning their houses and fumigating the air with various scents and fresh
fruits.78
The prescriptions of T~shkopruz~de
for a Muslim community at the time of a plague epidemic bring into focus the
contrasting orientations of the two religions. The Black Death touched upon
the central theme of Christian teaching concerning evil and human suffering;
Western man took the plague epidemic as an individual trial more than a collective,
social calamity. The Islamic tradition, however, has not concerned itself
to the same degree with personal suffering; the central problem for the Muslim
is the solemn responsibility for his decisions that affect other men’s lives
and fortunes within a purposeful creation. The cosmic settings of the two
faiths are wide apart in their emphasis: where the Muslim’s primary duty was
toward the correct behavior of the total community based on the sacred law,
the Christian’s was with personal redemption. Where the Qur’an supplied guidance,
the Bible furnished consolation. For the Muslim the Black Death was part of
a God-ordered, natural universe; for the Christian it was an irruption of
the profane world of sin and misery.
In sum, it would be as great
an error to discount the religious interpretations of plague as motives and
limits to communal behavior as to discount the classical medical theories
of plague which underlay most of the medical remedies and treatments in both
the East and West. Taken together, the medieval Christian ideas of punishment
and guilt, militancy toward alien communities, and millennialism are raised
to crucial significance in contrast to the Muslim understanding of the Black
Death. The operative European Christian concepts were lacking in Muslim society
as were their unattractive consequences of religious fanaticism, persecution,
and desperation. The predominant theological views of the two societies set
the framework for normative attitudes and the prescriptions for communal behavior
in which human nature found expression and form when confronted by the Black
Death.
Department of History
California State University
Hayward, California 94542,
U.S.A.
----------------------
78 T&shkoprilz5de,
Majm0’at ash-shifd’ ti-adwigat al-wabd’
ma’ rasd’ it lit-Bus fclmi, Berlin MS Landberg no. 999 (Ahlwardt no. 6378).
fol. 34a.
~ M. G. S. Hodgson, “A
Comparison of Isl&m and Christianity as Framework for Religious Life,” Diogenes 32 (1960) 70.