thinkingthroughsources

Source 11.4: Religious Responses in the Islamic World

Religion permeated the worlds of both Islam and Christianity during the fourteenth century. It is hardly surprising, then, that many people would turn to religious practices in their efforts to understand and cope with a catastrophe of such immense proportions. And yet for a few, the plague challenged established religious understandings. Some Islamic scholars had long opposed the idea of contagion as an explanation for the spread of disease as it seemed to grant human actions, rather than God’s decree, the primary role in this process. The plague, however, persuaded one Muslim scholar and physician, al-Khatib, to reject this teaching. “The existence of contagion,” he wrote, “has been proved by experience, deduction, the senses, observation, and by unanimous reports.”3

Most people, however, turned to traditional religious practices to find some sense of meaning, comfort, and protection in the face of the unimaginable tragedy. Source 10.4, written by Ibn Kathir, an Islamic teacher from Damascus, describes one such event.

Questions to consider as you examine the source:

What specific practices did the Muslims of Damascus undertake? Why might they have chanted the Quran’s account of the flood of Noah in particular?
What assumptions underlay these practices?
What might you infer from Ibn Kathir’s description of the composition of the gathered crowd?

Ibn Kathir

The Beginning and the End: On History, ca. 1350–1351

At Damascus, a reading of the Traditions of Bukhari [a collection of the sayings of Muhammad] took place on June 5 of this year [1348] after the public prayer — with the great magistrates there assisting in the presence of a very dense crowd. The ceremony continued with a recitation of a section of the Koran, and the people poured out their supplication that the city be spared the plague. . . . It was predicted and feared that it would become a menace to Damascus. . . . On the morning of June 7, the crowd reassembled . . . and resumed the recitation of the flood of Noah. . . . During this month, the mortality increased among the population of Damascus, until it reached a daily average of more than 100 persons.

On Monday July 21, a proclamation made in the city invited the population to fast for three day; they were further asked to go on the fourth day, a Friday, to the Mosque of the Foot in order to humbly beseech God to take away this plague. . . . On the morning of July 25, the inhabitants threw themselves [into these ceremonies] at every opportunity. . . . One saw in this multitude Jews, Christians, Samaritans, old men, old women, young children, poor men, emirs, notables, magistrates, who processed after the morning prayer, not ceasing to chant their prayers until daybreak. That was a memorable ceremony. . . .

[By October] in the environs of the capital, the dead were innumerable, a thousand in a few days.

Source: Gaston Wiet, “La Grande Peste Noire en Syrie et en Egypt,” Études d’Orientalisme dédiées à la memoire de Lévi Provençal, 2 vols. (Paris: G.-P. Maisonneuve et Larose, 1962), 1:381–83.

Notes

Quoted in Aberth, The Black Death, 115.