Source 11.1: The Black Death in the Islamic World

Ibn al-Wardi was an Arab Muslim writer living in Aleppo, Syria, when the plague struck. He wrote extensively about what he witnessed and then died from the pestilence in 1349. As the only major contemporary account of the Black Death to survive from the Middle East, it was widely quoted by later Muslim writers and remains a major source for modern historians. His account is thoroughly informed by an Islamic religious sensibility, especially when he refers to the “noble tradition” that prohibits fleeing an outbreak of disease. Three passages from the hadiths, sayings attributed to Muhammad, were especially important:

When you learn that epidemic disease exists in a country, do not go there, but if it breaks out in the country where you are, do not leave.

He who dies of epidemic disease is a martyr.

It is a punishment that God inflicts on whom he wills, but He has granted a modicum of clemency with respect to Believers.1

These teachings made it a matter of faith for many Muslims to trust in God to protect them from the plague.

Questions to consider as you examine the source:

Ibn al-Wardi

Report of the Pestilence, 1348

The plague frightened and killed. It began in the land of darkness [Northern Asia]. Oh, what a visitor! . . . China was not preserved from it. The plague afflicted the Indians in India. . . . It attacked the Persians . . . and gnawed away at the Crimea. . . . The plague destroyed mankind in Cairo . . . the scourge came to Jerusalem. . . . It overtook those people who fled to the al-Aqsa Mosque. . . .

How amazingly does it pursue the people of each house. One of them spits blood and everyone in the household is certain of death . . . after two or three nights.

Oh God, it is acting by your command. Lift this from us.

The pestilence caused the people of Aleppo the same disturbance. . . . Oh, if you could see the nobles of Aleppo studying their inscrutable books of medicine. They multiply its remedies by eating dried and sour food. . . . They perfumed their homes with ambergris and camphor. . . . They wore ruby rings and put onions, vinegar, and sardines together with the daily meal. . . .

If you see many biers and their carriers and hear in every quarter of Aleppo the announcements of death and cries, you run from them and refuse to stay with them. The profits of the undertakers have greatly increased. . . . Those who sweat from carrying coffins enjoy this plague-time.

We ask God’s forgiveness for our souls’ bad inclinations; the plague is surely part of His punishment.

The plague is for the Muslims a martyrdom and a reward, and for the disbelievers a punishment and a rebuke. . . . It has been established by our Prophet . . . that the plague-stricken are martyrs. . . . And this secret should be pleasing to the true believer. If someone says that it causes infection and destruction, say: God creates and recreates. . . . If we acknowledge the plague’s devastation of the people, it is the will of the Chosen Doer. I take refuge in God from the yoke of the plague.

One man begs another to take care of his children, and one says goodbye to his neighbors. A third perfects his work, and another prepares his shroud. A fifth is reconciled with his enemies, and another treats his friends with kindness. . . . One man puts aside his property [in a religious endowment called a waqf]; one frees his servants. One man changes his character, while another amends his ways. There is no protection today from it other than His mercy, praise be to God.

Nothing prevented us from running away from the plague, except our devotion to the noble tradition [prohibiting flight from a plague-stricken land]. Come then, seek the aid of God Almighty for raising the plague, for He is the best helper. . . . We do not depend on our good health against the plague, but on You [God].

[Somewhat later, a fifteenth-century account of the plague in Cairo by the Egyptian scholar al-Maqrizi reported that people received very high wages for reciting the Quran at funerals, caring for the ill, and washing the dead. Many trades disappeared as artisans found more lucrative employment in plague-related occupations. Fields went unharvested for lack of peasants to do the work. Weddings and family feasts vanished, and even the call to prayer was sometimes canceled. Al-Maqrizi reported that in Cairo, “some people appropriated for themselves without scruple the immovable and movable goods and cash of their former owners after their demise. But very few lived long enough to profit thereby.”2]

Source: Michael Dols, “Ibn al-Wardi’s Risalah al-Naba’ ‘an al-Waba’, a Translation of a Major Source for the History of the Black Death in the Middle East” in Near Eastern Numismatics, Iconography, Epigraphy and History: Studies in Honor of George C. Miles, ed. Dickran K. Kouymjian (Beirut: American University of Beirut, 1974), 448–455. Reprinted by permission of the American University of Beirut Press.

Notes

  1. Manfred Ullman, Islamic Medicine (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1978), 94–95.
  2. Quoted in John Aberth, The Black Death (Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2005), 85.