Plague And Contagion In The Islamic Mediterranean

This volume discusses diseases that affected human and non-human populations in areas stretching from the Red Sea and Egypt to Anatolia, the Balkans, and the Black Sea, in the early modern and modern eras. It tackles various questions of historiography and sources, tests new interdisciplinary methodologies, and asks new questions while revisiting older ones. Lastly, it contributes to Ottoman studies, the history of medicine, Mediterranean and European history, as well as global studies on the role of epidemics in history.

The first comprehensive volume of articles on plague and other diseases that afflicted humans and animals in the Ottoman Empire--from the Black Death to the fall of the empire.

"Over the last decade or two, the field of Middle Eastern and Islamic studies has witnessed the convergence of new perspectives on the history of epidemic diseases. A growing body of scholarship enables us to explore connections between Middle Eastern studies and the histories of medicine and health. This study serves as testimony that the field has reached a certain level of maturity. Contributors to the volume tackle various questions of historiography and sources, test new interdisciplinary methodologies, and ask new questions while revisiting older ones. Essays in the volume discuss diseases that affected human and non-human populations in areas stretching from the Red Sea and Egypt to Anatolia, the Balkans, and the Black Sea, in the early modern and modern eras. The volume contributes to Ottoman studies, the history of medicine, Mediterranean and European history, as well as global studies on the role of epidemics in history."--Bloomsbury Publishing.

Infectious Ideas is a comparative analysis of how Muslim and Christian scholars explained the transmission of disease in the premodern Mediterranean world. How did religious communities respond to and make sense of epidemic disease? To answer this, historian Justin K. Stearns looks at how Muslim and Christian communities conceived of contagion, focusing especially on the Iberian Peninsula in the aftermath of the Black Death. What Stearns discovers calls into question recent scholarship on Muslim and Christian reactions to the plague and leprosy. Stearns shows that rather than universally reject the concept of contagion, as most scholars have affirmed, Muslim scholars engaged in creative and rational attempts to understand it. He explores how Christian scholars used the metaphor of contagion to define proper and safe interactions with heretics, Jews, and Muslims, and how contagion itself denoted phenomena as distinct as the evil eye and the effects of corrupted air. Stearns argues that at the heart of the work of both Muslims and Christians, although their approaches differed, was a desire to protect the physical and spiritual health of their respective communities. Based on Stearns's analysis of Muslim and Christian legal, theological, historical, and medical texts in Arabic, Medieval Castilian, and Latin, Infectious Ideas is the first book to offer a comparative discussion of concepts of contagion in the premodern Mediterranean world.

This is the first systematic scholarly study of the Ottoman experience of plague during the Black Death pandemic and the centuries that followed. Using a wealth of archival and narrative sources, including medical treatises, hagiographies, and travelers' accounts, as well as recent scientific research, Nükhet Varlik demonstrates how plague interacted with the environmental, social, and political structures of the Ottoman Empire from the late medieval through the early modern era. The book argues that the empire's growth transformed the epidemiological patterns of plague by bringing diverse ecological zones into interaction and by intensifying the mobilities of exchange among both human and non-human agents. Varlik maintains that persistent plagues elicited new forms of cultural imagination and expression, as well as a new body of knowledge about the disease. In turn, this new consciousness sharpened the Ottoman administrative response to the plague, while contributing to the makings of an early modern state.

A sweeping examination of Ottoman plague treatise writers from the Black Death until 1923

Through case studies, this book investigates the pictorial imaging of epidemics globally, especially from the late eighteenth century through the 1920s when, amidst expanding Western industrialism, colonialism, and scientific research, the world endured a succession of pandemics in tandem with the rise of popular visual culture and new media. Images discussed range from the depiction of people and places to the invisible realms of pathogens and emotions, while topics include the messaging of disease prevention and containment in public health initiatives, the motivations of governments to ensure control, the criticism of authority in graphic satire, and the private experience of illness in the domestic realm. Essays explore biomedical conditions as well as the recurrent constructed social narratives of bias, blame, and othering regarding race, gender, and class that are frequently highlighted in visual representations. This volume offers a pictured genealogy of pandemic experience that has continuing resonance. The book will be of interest to scholars working in art history, visual studies, history of medicine, and medical humanities.

Yaron Ayalon explores the Ottoman Empire's history of natural disasters and its responses on a state, communal, and individual level.