Speaker 1: My Plague. Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, the
Speaker 1: production of My Heart Radio. Hey, welcome to Stuff to
Speaker 1: Blow your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb and I'm
Speaker 1: Joe McCormick, and we're back with part three of our
Speaker 1: talk about the plague, the Second Plague, pandemic, the Black Death,
Speaker 1: and specifically some religious responses to it now in parts
Speaker 1: one and two. In part one, we sort of focused
Speaker 1: on the plague itself, some questions about how it was transmitted,
Speaker 1: what the different pandemics looked like, and so forth. And
Speaker 1: then in the second episode we focused largely on religious
Speaker 1: responses to the plague in Christian Europe. Today, we wanted
Speaker 1: to expand talking about religious responses to the plague and
Speaker 1: talk about some historical work on Islamic responses. But to
Speaker 1: begin this discussion, I wanted to start by reading a
Speaker 1: wonderful tale that I came across in a paper by
Speaker 1: a scholar that I'm going to be referring to later
Speaker 1: in this episode. So this story was originally told by
Speaker 1: an Ottoman historian in the late fifteenth century about events
Speaker 1: that allegedly happened I think in northwest Anatolia, which is
Speaker 1: modern day Turkey. And the translation and retelling of the
Speaker 1: story is by a modern historian named Neuquat Varlik, who
Speaker 1: I believe is currently a professor in the history department
Speaker 1: at the University of South Carolina. But Rob, if you're ready,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna read this tale, let's do it. On the
Speaker 1: first night of January of fourteen Nino, while transporting a
Speaker 1: load from Gallipoli to Aderna with other fellow laborers, a
Speaker 1: wagon driver had an accident in bully year when his
Speaker 1: ox was injured on the road and could not move
Speaker 1: any further. His fellow drivers went to town to bring help,
Speaker 1: leaving him alone to spend the night on the accident site.
Speaker 1: Later that evening, when the unfortunate wagon driver was crying
Speaker 1: in despair, he suddenly heard a loud noise, whereupon he
Speaker 1: saw two horsemen in black attire astride black horses, racing
Speaker 1: toward him. In fear, he hid under the wagon and
Speaker 1: watched them going by like a lightning. Immediately after them,
Speaker 1: a horseman in green attire, riding a pale horse and
Speaker 1: waving a lightning whip, came by and called out to him, Oh,
Speaker 1: you driver, have you seen two horsemen in black attire
Speaker 1: riding black horses. When the driver showed him in which
Speaker 1: direction they went. The horseman then asked the driver what
Speaker 1: he was waiting for. Once the driver told him about
Speaker 1: the accident, the horseman descended from his horse and touched
Speaker 1: the leg of the ox three times, and the beast
Speaker 1: was miraculously healed. Upon seeing this, the driver moved toward
Speaker 1: the horseman in gratitude and inquired about his whereabouts. The
Speaker 1: horseman revealed himself as profit his ear helping those in need.
Speaker 1: He added that he was chasing The horseman quote. They
Speaker 1: are pestilence and plague. They live among people God sent them.
Speaker 1: They obey the orders of God. I have received an
Speaker 1: order from God to expel them. They were eight in total.
Speaker 1: I killed six of them. If I can kill those
Speaker 1: two before they reached the seashore, there shall not be
Speaker 1: another plague for thirty years. Oh wow, I kind of
Speaker 1: want to see the rest of the movie. I mean,
Speaker 1: this is this sound, this is delightfully cinematic. Yeah, the
Speaker 1: writers in black the ring rights and then yeah, a hero,
Speaker 1: a hero in green with a lightning whip upon a
Speaker 1: pale horse chasing down plague to kill it. Ye, so
Speaker 1: this tale was originally set down by a fifteenth century
Speaker 1: Ottoman chronicler named Rooch, and I found the retelling in
Speaker 1: a paper called from bett Noir to lemal de Constantinople, Plagues,
Speaker 1: Medicine and the Early modern Ottoman State by an author
Speaker 1: named Nuquet Varlik in the Journal of World History. And
Speaker 1: this is a paper that documents evidence of how the
Speaker 1: conceptualization of plague and the administrative reaction to it within
Speaker 1: the Ottoman Empire changed over the course of several centuries.
Speaker 1: But regarding that tale itself, one fact I found funny
Speaker 1: was that despite the supernatural details that make it seem
Speaker 1: like an obvious piece of creative storytelling, the original chronicler
Speaker 1: or Roach apparently claims that it is based on the
Speaker 1: testimony of several trustworthy witnesses. So I'm not sure what
Speaker 1: to make of that, but anyway, Varlec highlights it in
Speaker 1: her paper as a fascinating example of popular plague narrative
Speaker 1: and one that reveals some common features of thought about
Speaker 1: epidemic disease in the Ottoman Empire. So apparently this story
Speaker 1: bears strong resemblance to other tales like it going back
Speaker 1: to the early Islamic period in which there's usually like
Speaker 1: a man in green riding a pale horse who appear
Speaker 1: in times of epidemic, disease or other struggle and helps
Speaker 1: people rid themselves of pestilence or rid themselves of gin,
Speaker 1: which are a form of supernatural creature, kind of demon
Speaker 1: that might be made of air or flame. Uh. And
Speaker 1: there are other common elements to such as the figure
Speaker 1: in green uh touching, the touching a wound, or touching
Speaker 1: an animal or say a leg three times in order
Speaker 1: to heal it. And so the hero in this story
Speaker 1: given given the name Heasy or here is also known
Speaker 1: I've seen spelled as al Keter or al kadir uh
Speaker 1: some those. That's sometimes like a l k h a
Speaker 1: d I r, which means the green One, I believe,
Speaker 1: though I think there's some etymological debate about where that
Speaker 1: name comes from. It's largely taken, I think to me
Speaker 1: in the Green One or the Verdant One. He's a
Speaker 1: sort of saint or guardian angel type figure who appears
Speaker 1: in Islamic lore going very far back. So Varlex says
Speaker 1: this story would have had very familiar narrative of elements
Speaker 1: to listeners and readers. In fifteenth century Anatolia. But there
Speaker 1: are also unusual elements, For example, the portrayal of plague
Speaker 1: and pestilence as writers in black is, she says, otherwise
Speaker 1: rare or perhaps even unique to this story at this
Speaker 1: point in Ottoman literature. Though It's interesting to me because
Speaker 1: at least now that's a motif that seems utterly natural,
Speaker 1: Like depicting plague as embodied as a as a writer
Speaker 1: wearing a black cloak on a black horse like that.
Speaker 1: That that seems like something I would have encountered in
Speaker 1: stories all the time. So I'm wondering if it comes
Speaker 1: from this or if there there are parallel traditions in
Speaker 1: other cultures. Yeah, because certainly from a Western perspective and
Speaker 1: with the benefit of of you know, multiple centuries to
Speaker 1: look back on, and that's the grim Reaper, the black
Speaker 1: hooded figure like this is just such a staple of
Speaker 1: of Western traditions and Western depictions of of evil and
Speaker 1: uh and these these forces of destruction. Yeah, but did
Speaker 1: it exist within Islamic thought or with an Ottoman thought
Speaker 1: at the time beyond this one story that is? Yeah,
Speaker 1: And so Varlex says, this story is actually a pretty
Speaker 1: excellent reflection of how Ottoman Muslims of the of the
Speaker 1: time period generally thought about plague as part of what
Speaker 1: she she calls the Islamic plague cosmology of the fifteenth century,
Speaker 1: which she characterizes as a system of explanations that are
Speaker 1: ultimately revolving around divine causation around God. So she writes, quote,
Speaker 1: according to this, plagues were inflicted upon humans by God,
Speaker 1: and God alone had the power to relieve humans from
Speaker 1: this ill In its broadest outlines, this vision of divine
Speaker 1: origins and agency prevailed in the Islamic world throughout the ages,
Speaker 1: and as such remained the predominant discourse circulating both orally
Speaker 1: and in written texts. And so in this way it
Speaker 1: sounds at least in part comparable to what we discussed
Speaker 1: in the previous episode where arting Christian Europe, which was
Speaker 1: that there may have been many different beliefs at the
Speaker 1: time in Christian Europe about the proximate causes of plague.
Speaker 1: You know, wasn't mi asthma type of bad air that's
Speaker 1: pervading the town's or was it astrological causes? You know,
Speaker 1: was it a conjunction of the planets coming into a
Speaker 1: terrible catastrophic alignment or earthquakes releasing vapors from the ground
Speaker 1: or something, but whatever the proximate causes, where most authors
Speaker 1: in Christian Europe at the time would generally trace the
Speaker 1: causal chain at some point back to divine will God
Speaker 1: sent this plague. But regarding the Islamic views on the
Speaker 1: causes of plague, I do want to be clear that
Speaker 1: Varlik qualifies this characterization by stressing that there is not
Speaker 1: just one monolithic Islamic tradition, nor was there only one
Speaker 1: type of view held by Muslims at the time, And
Speaker 1: in fact, the rest of her paper after this opening
Speaker 1: story is devoted to showing how the multiple courses in
Speaker 1: Ottoman society, beginning mostly under this umbrella of Islamic plague
Speaker 1: cosmology where where basically all of the causes of plague
Speaker 1: are divine, how that evolved over the years and then
Speaker 1: especially during the sixteenth century, transformed into a radically different
Speaker 1: and more medical or naturalistic theory of the causes of
Speaker 1: plague and what the appropriate responses to it should be. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think it's also worth remembering that the Islamic world
Speaker 1: during the centuries we're talking about here, they had access
Speaker 1: to a great deal of important knowledge, in some cases
Speaker 1: knowledge that had essentially been lost to Western Europe and
Speaker 1: and sometimes only accessed again in Europe through Islamic texts. So,
Speaker 1: you know, in Western centric imaginings of things, it might
Speaker 1: be easy to you know, to dream up this world
Speaker 1: of monkst libraries, nights, and peasants on one hand, and
Speaker 1: then this monolithic religion on the other. But the Islamic
Speaker 1: world harbored some of the greatest minds of age. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: a lot of European wisdom of the time was actually
Speaker 1: derived from works produced by the Islamic world in the
Speaker 1: Middle Ages. Say from a big example that we referenced
Speaker 1: in a previous episode is uh the the Persian poly
Speaker 1: math Avicenna, who is you know, sometimes considered one of
Speaker 1: the the fathers of modern medicine, and that his work
Speaker 1: was very influential not just in the Islamic world, but
Speaker 1: also in Christian Europe. Now, I want to come back
Speaker 1: and revisit uh varlecks paper a little bit later in
Speaker 1: the episode, but for a bit I'd like to shift
Speaker 1: to talk about some of the major themes in the
Speaker 1: existing comparative analysis of how Christians and Muslims responded to
Speaker 1: the Black Death and its recurrent waves because I know
Speaker 1: this was one of the things that got you interested
Speaker 1: in this subject to begin with, But then it was
Speaker 1: one of those subjects where as soon as you start
Speaker 1: to get a peek in through the window, you realize
Speaker 1: that it's like very complex. There's and like every time
Speaker 1: you read something and you think you know a fact,
Speaker 1: then there's like you read something else and realize, oh no,
Speaker 1: maybe that's not as clear as it once seemed. Um
Speaker 1: And and this seems to be a common feature not
Speaker 1: just of comparing Christian and Islamic reactions to say, plague
Speaker 1: in the Middle Ages, but a common feature of the
Speaker 1: history of comparative religious analysis. Uh, you know, I'd like
Speaker 1: comparative religious analysis. It's really interesting. You can learn a
Speaker 1: lot from comparing and contrasting different religious traditions. But it's
Speaker 1: also very, very tricky. It's one of those subject areas
Speaker 1: where you can easily be tempted into forming inaccurate generalizations
Speaker 1: on the basis of a small set of evidence. And
Speaker 1: you and you've got a kind of natural zeal to
Speaker 1: identify patterns and trends. You want to be able to
Speaker 1: make general statements and make characterizations so it looks like
Speaker 1: you have actually discovered facts that generally hold true. But
Speaker 1: sometimes the you know, the the zeal to make facts
Speaker 1: statements of that kind overcomes what should be some caution
Speaker 1: and what what should what should be caution and humility
Speaker 1: in the face of trying to characterize something as complex
Speaker 1: as a religious response. Actually, remember this came up when
Speaker 1: we were reading papers about iconic versus an iconic religious traditions.
Speaker 1: You know, it seems like scholars who engage in comparative
Speaker 1: religious analysis today are increasingly conscious of the need to
Speaker 1: be kind of frugal and tentative with generalizations about the
Speaker 1: similarities and differences between entire religions and the communities that
Speaker 1: practice them, because comparing and contrasting to religions isn't like
Speaker 1: comparing and contrasting the features of geometrical shapes, you know,
Speaker 1: like you can list the the all of the differences
Speaker 1: and similarities between a right triangle and an Isosceles triangle
Speaker 1: or something. But but you know, religions are extremely complex
Speaker 1: social phenomena, and sometimes you're not even aware of what
Speaker 1: you're missing out on. As a function of the sources
Speaker 1: of evidence available to you. Yeah, Like I think we've
Speaker 1: discussed this in terms of say Buddhism, for example. Know,
Speaker 1: I mean you can if you talk very generally about Buddhism,
Speaker 1: what are you accounting for the different regional versions of
Speaker 1: of of the faith? Are you dealing with the different
Speaker 1: um different social levels within a given community, Like, there's
Speaker 1: so many different divisions that can be uh, you can
Speaker 1: you can pull on and if you're just being very
Speaker 1: general about it, Yeah, it might help you prop up
Speaker 1: a point you're trying to make, but you're certainly not
Speaker 1: gonna be doing a fair job of of speaking to
Speaker 1: how that particular model of faith. Uh uh you know
Speaker 1: impacts uh, you know, the human condition at large. I mean,
Speaker 1: I think about how difficult it is to make accurate
Speaker 1: generalizations about something as complex as a religion, even when
Speaker 1: you live amongst it, Like how how would you make
Speaker 1: accurate characterizations about, say, Catholicism in twenty first century America,
Speaker 1: even though like you probably know a bunch of Catholics
Speaker 1: in America in the twenty first century and like you know,
Speaker 1: you you you're immersed in a culture in which this
Speaker 1: is this is one part of it. Um. Uh so
Speaker 1: it seems like you should have a really good view
Speaker 1: about it, but then it's still probably hard to make
Speaker 1: accurate generalizations. And now imagine you had to make those
Speaker 1: generalizations hundreds of years later, working off of a select
Speaker 1: number of surviving books from the period, and that's pretty
Speaker 1: much it. So anyway, all that to say that when
Speaker 1: you engage in this type of stuff, it's important to
Speaker 1: have a spirit of humility and and be cautious about
Speaker 1: how much you think you know. And following from that,
Speaker 1: something we talked about in the previous episodes is that,
Speaker 1: much like the scientific history of the plague pandemic itself,
Speaker 1: the subject of the Islamic response religious response to plague
Speaker 1: has undergone some revision and re examination in recent decades.
Speaker 1: And uh so here I think maybe it makes sense
Speaker 1: to introduce two different papers that I've been looking at,
Speaker 1: uh to introduce what seems to me to be one
Speaker 1: an example of sort of the dominant historical characterizations from
Speaker 1: uh say, the late twentieth century, along side a more
Speaker 1: recent paper I found talking about some re examination of
Speaker 1: those claims. So to start with the older characterizations, I'll
Speaker 1: refer to a paper I quoted in the previous episode
Speaker 1: It's a piece called the Comparative Communal Responses to the
Speaker 1: Black Death in Muslim and Christian Societies by Michael W. Dolls,
Speaker 1: published in the nineteen seventies. This is the historian Michael W. Dolls,
Speaker 1: who lived nineteen forty two to nineteen eighty nine. And
Speaker 1: this piece was actually the place I found that description
Speaker 1: of the plague from the fourteenth century North African Muslim
Speaker 1: historian Eben Caldoon, which was you remember that really haunting
Speaker 1: description of like the city's being emptied and the way
Speaker 1: signs falling away, And what did he say? It was
Speaker 1: as if the voice of existence in the world had
Speaker 1: called out for oblivion, and restriction in the world had
Speaker 1: responded to its call. Yeah, but anyway, so that that's
Speaker 1: the Dolls piece I'm gonna be looking at, but then
Speaker 1: also providing some more recent or revised understanding, though not
Speaker 1: just responding to Dolls. I was also reading a uh
Speaker 1: An article by Justin Stearns, who I believe is a
Speaker 1: professor at n y U Abu Dhabi who specializes in
Speaker 1: uh Muslim history, and this one is called New Directions
Speaker 1: in the Study of Religious Responses to the Black Death,
Speaker 1: And I should stress that those sterns disagrees with a
Speaker 1: few of dolls as generalizations uh that that he makes.
Speaker 1: He says that overall Dolls's history is like a really
Speaker 1: important and excellent work. It is it. He does seem
Speaker 1: to be widely cited. Yeah, so it's not like the
Speaker 1: older one is like bad. It's just like he you know,
Speaker 1: maybe could have had more nuance in it. Got you now.
Speaker 1: I think in the previous episode we talked about how
Speaker 1: even if you put religious ideas aside for a moment,
Speaker 1: that Christian and Muslim societies into some degree tended to
Speaker 1: share the same dominant mechanical theories of the spread of plague.
Speaker 1: Where they had mechanical theories of the spread, which was
Speaker 1: the most common was that they were rooted in miasthma theory. Again,
Speaker 1: this is uh, the idea that there would be some
Speaker 1: form of bad air spreading the plague, and that this
Speaker 1: would have been derived from the common heritage of medical
Speaker 1: authorities like Hippocrates, Galen, and Avicenna. But then Dole says
Speaker 1: that European Christian and Muslim reactions were quite dissimilar in
Speaker 1: terms of their religious responses, and that this tells us
Speaker 1: something about the essential identity of each religious culture. So
Speaker 1: Doles has three major claims about the dominant views of
Speaker 1: Muslim religious authorities during the Black Death and and they
Speaker 1: go like this, and we can come back and analyze
Speaker 1: or maybe question these as we move along. So, first
Speaker 1: of all, Dole says that plague was viewed as a
Speaker 1: mercy from God and a martyrdom for the faithful Muslim.
Speaker 1: And so this this is an interesting variation to the
Speaker 1: extent that it's true, because by being a martyrdom, this
Speaker 1: would make dying from plague and a form of honorable
Speaker 1: death that will ensure that the martyr is delivered to paradise.
Speaker 1: And this stands in contrast to the widespread Christian view
Speaker 1: that plague was a divine punishment for sin uh though
Speaker 1: Doles mentioned some Muslim opinion that plague could be a
Speaker 1: punishment for sin in some cases, or say for nonbelievers. Alright,
Speaker 1: so the second tenant is quote a Muslim should not
Speaker 1: enter nor flee from a plague stricken land. And apparently
Speaker 1: this is a longstanding prophetic tradition in Islam. And to
Speaker 1: the extent that people did hold disbelief, it would obviously
Speaker 1: interfere with them protecting themselves by fleeing plague ridden towns.
Speaker 1: And then the third point is that quote, there was
Speaker 1: no contagion of plague, since disease came directly from God.
Speaker 1: And this is allegedly in contrast to Christian Europe, where
Speaker 1: although there was no germ theory of disease, you could
Speaker 1: see that there was some kind of rudimentary concept of contagion,
Speaker 1: the idea that somehow by being around plague you could
Speaker 1: get plague, though the mechanisms might have been obscure. So
Speaker 1: I think the difference here is that Doles is claiming
Speaker 1: that while in Europe there was broadly an idea that
Speaker 1: plague could be transmitted by some kind of brute physical causation,
Speaker 1: you could somehow just like get plague from the environment,
Speaker 1: in the Muslim world, plague was given to you directly
Speaker 1: by supernatural means by God, and thus didn't physically spread.
Speaker 1: And Doll's emphasizes these claims he makes by putting them
Speaker 1: in contrast to what he what he would claim about
Speaker 1: Christian Europe. So he writes, quote, the importance of these
Speaker 1: three principles to Muslim society was in what they did
Speaker 1: not affirm. They did not declare that plague was God's punishment,
Speaker 1: they did not encourage flight, and they did not support
Speaker 1: a belief in the contagious nature of plague, all of
Speaker 1: which were prevalent in Christian Europe. However, he does quality
Speaker 1: ify these. He also does not treat these as the
Speaker 1: universal blanket statements. He says that while these three religio
Speaker 1: legal tenants, or what he calls them, while they were
Speaker 1: generally held, it would be untrue and unreasonable to believe
Speaker 1: they were held universally, and there was some measure of
Speaker 1: scholarly debate about them. So as for the first principle,
Speaker 1: the idea that plague is a is a mercy and
Speaker 1: a martyrdom from God, there is some historical and literary
Speaker 1: evidence of people believing the opposite in Muslim societies, that
Speaker 1: in some cases it was viewed as a punishment for sin,
Speaker 1: like it was commonly in Christian Europe, rather than as
Speaker 1: a mercy. So just one example I came across. I
Speaker 1: was reading that paper by by Newcat Varlick, and she
Speaker 1: mentions a saying of a fifteenth century Ottoman scholar who
Speaker 1: attributes plague to adultery. So you know when adultery takes place,
Speaker 1: you know that that can only foster evil upon the world,
Speaker 1: and that evil becomes plague, which sounds kind of like
Speaker 1: some of the things that we were talking about in
Speaker 1: the last episode that were commonly believed in Europe. Now
Speaker 1: there might be some doubt about these three characterizations he makes,
Speaker 1: but first, I did just want to mention some consequences
Speaker 1: that Dolls believes follows from uh these three facts he
Speaker 1: believes to be true about the Muslim response to plague.
Speaker 1: One major difference is that Muslim societies do not really
Speaker 1: seem to record what he calls, quoting another source the
Speaker 1: quote striking manifestations of abnormal collective psychology, of dissociation of
Speaker 1: the group mind that were present in Christian Europe. Um. So,
Speaker 1: for example, he says that there's really no evidence that
Speaker 1: Muslim society has produced apocalyptic messianic movements in response to
Speaker 1: the Black Death as did Christian Europe. So think of
Speaker 1: the flagelence that we talked about last time, and he
Speaker 1: thinks that this may be in part due to a
Speaker 1: relative lack of theological precedent in Islamic tradition. Quote. Furthermore,
Speaker 1: the fact that there was no certainty that play was
Speaker 1: a divine punishment for sin, removed the impetus for a
Speaker 1: cohesive puritanical and revivalist popular movement. Yeah, because if you
Speaker 1: think back to what we discussed in the last episode,
Speaker 1: there was this sense that the system is failing, like,
Speaker 1: why are we still being punished by God for our sins?
Speaker 1: What more do we have to do? Perhaps we have
Speaker 1: to work outside the system, And it leads to these
Speaker 1: various heretical um threads such as the flagelence you know,
Speaker 1: becomes a movement, and yeah, you can see where of
Speaker 1: if there's a not a precedent for those kinds of
Speaker 1: movements and you you don't have as much of this
Speaker 1: emphasis of of play being directly caused by by personal
Speaker 1: or communal sin, uh, then there's there's less room for
Speaker 1: that to to to grow right now. There's another important
Speaker 1: difference that the Doll's argues. He says that minority communities
Speaker 1: in Muslim lands were not persecuted a reaction to the plague,
Speaker 1: certainly not to the extent that they were in Europe.
Speaker 1: For example, the way Jews were persecuted in communities throughout
Speaker 1: Christian Europe as a sort of a violent outburst in
Speaker 1: response to the plague and dolls. Thinks this may be
Speaker 1: in part derivative of his claim that Muslims did not
Speaker 1: generally believe in contagion, but rather believe that plague was
Speaker 1: sent directly from God. So the way that would work
Speaker 1: is if you can't really get the plague from a
Speaker 1: physical cause, like if if you know it's just God
Speaker 1: deciding whether or not you get plague, if you can
Speaker 1: only get it straight from the divine realm, then you
Speaker 1: couldn't really have these delusional conspiracy theories about Jews poisoning
Speaker 1: the wells and so forth. Now, now, speaking of the
Speaker 1: the the Jewish persecution during the Black Death, I had
Speaker 1: I want to throw in just one little bit here.
Speaker 1: I had some notes on this, but then we ended
Speaker 1: up not covering it. And then we heard from a
Speaker 1: listener on the stuff Doable Your Mind Discussion module, which
Speaker 1: is the book group for for for discussion of the show,
Speaker 1: heard from Adam, who is a rabbi, and what was
Speaker 1: writing in about between these episodes about a book that
Speaker 1: they've read titled The Jew in the Medieval World by
Speaker 1: Jacob R. Marcus so Um. Basically, this added wrinkle in
Speaker 1: the Jewish persecution during the Black Death death was that
Speaker 1: there was apparently this charge that Jewish people were less
Speaker 1: affected by plague and that this was uh. This indicated
Speaker 1: that they were somehow involved in it. Now, to be clear,
Speaker 1: as we as we stressed in the last episode, Jewish
Speaker 1: people did die of plague like everyone else, and at
Speaker 1: an appalling rate. But there it is sometimes though asked
Speaker 1: whether Jewish hygiene practices might have given them a slight
Speaker 1: edge over the rest of the population in terms of
Speaker 1: of previous illnesses and outbreaks and even with the Black
Speaker 1: Death UM. So it's it's interesting to think about. It's
Speaker 1: it's worth stressing that this form of anti Semitic messaging
Speaker 1: continued on for centuries, and you see variations of this
Speaker 1: even during the twentieth century. There's um I've seen images
Speaker 1: of a Polish poster, for example, that invokes fears of Typhus,
Speaker 1: connecting Jewish people to Typhus um you know, which, which
Speaker 1: is just another example of of anti Semitic persecution. But
Speaker 1: to your point, if there is a widespread belief that uh,
Speaker 1: that afflictions like this come directly from God and cannot
Speaker 1: be acquired from other communities or other individuals within your
Speaker 1: own community, Uh, then there's less room to engage in
Speaker 1: this kind of thought, right, because you couldn't think that
Speaker 1: it was like somehow a physical weapon being used against
Speaker 1: you by, say, you know, a a persecuted minority group
Speaker 1: that you had suspicions and resentments toward. In a way,
Speaker 1: all this ties into something that the Dole says ultimately
Speaker 1: where he characterizes the Muslim reaction to plague as relatively
Speaker 1: quote pacific, collective and controlled compared to the response to
Speaker 1: plague in Christian Europe. Uh So there's a long quote
Speaker 1: I guess I'm not gonna read this whole bit, but
Speaker 1: I'm gonna read part of it where he's sort of
Speaker 1: summing up what he sees as some of the major
Speaker 1: differences and how they grow from the different different theological
Speaker 1: emphasies of these two religions. He says, quote, the cosmic
Speaker 1: settings of the two faiths are wide apart in their emphasis.
Speaker 1: Where the Muslims primary duty was toward the correct behavior
Speaker 1: of the total community based on the Sacred Law, the
Speaker 1: Christians was with personal redemption, where the Koran supplied guidance
Speaker 1: the Bible furnished consolation. For the Muslim the Black Death
Speaker 1: was part of a god oriented natural universe. For the
Speaker 1: Christian it was an eruption of the profane world of
Speaker 1: sin and misery. But anyway, I've been mentioning that with
Speaker 1: these three generalizations that the Dolls makes, I wanted to
Speaker 1: come back and and possibly interrogate them or or question
Speaker 1: them to some extent by consulting this paper is reading
Speaker 1: by by Justin Stearns from two thousand nine, And this
Speaker 1: paper makes clear Sterns is very much a fan of
Speaker 1: of evaluating the religious responses of Christians, Muslims, and Jews
Speaker 1: to the plague. So it's not like he thinks it
Speaker 1: is not a worthwhile project to engage in comparative historical
Speaker 1: religious analysis. That's what he's clearly into um. But he
Speaker 1: does talk about how previous scholarship has regarded the responses
Speaker 1: of the three religions here as fundamentally different in important ways,
Speaker 1: such as how they conceptualize contagion, like we were just
Speaker 1: talking about. And one of the things that Sterns emphasizes
Speaker 1: is that these distinctions are not necessarily so clear as
Speaker 1: they have seemed other scholars, and that there is often
Speaker 1: more internal diversity and debate within each religion than has
Speaker 1: previously been appreciated, and more similarities between their responses than
Speaker 1: is sometimes appreciated. I'm not going to go in depth
Speaker 1: on every point he he makes in this paper, but
Speaker 1: there was one thing he gets into early slightly orthogonal
Speaker 1: to what we're talking about. But but I did think
Speaker 1: it was very interesting, which was about the idea of
Speaker 1: local versus universal, And it's sort of the idea that
Speaker 1: you can't really understand the Second plague pandemic if you
Speaker 1: only think about the initial outbreak in the middle of
Speaker 1: the fourteenth century in Europe. You need to think more
Speaker 1: broadly in terms of time and geography. But at the
Speaker 1: same time, you can't just think about the plague, the
Speaker 1: Second plague pandemic, which in a way you could argue
Speaker 1: goes on for centuries as something that had global effects
Speaker 1: continuously for the entire time that it was present, because
Speaker 1: each outbreak of plague in each individual region, each new epidemic,
Speaker 1: could be perceived by the people experiencing it as at
Speaker 1: least potentially local and unique. It was happening to them
Speaker 1: in the place where they lived, and it was this
Speaker 1: current disaster. You know, we can sometimes be lured by
Speaker 1: the breadth of history into thinking that people in other
Speaker 1: times and places in history understood they were living in
Speaker 1: a historical trend much more than they did, you know,
Speaker 1: Like we we don't even really understand the historical trends
Speaker 1: that we're living in until until we're right at the
Speaker 1: end of them. Often, yeah, and and sometimes not even
Speaker 1: even then. Like it's you know, it's sometimes it's difficult
Speaker 1: to look back on previous decades and think of them
Speaker 1: as as like historical periods in the same way we
Speaker 1: might view some you know, like say the eighties, the seventies,
Speaker 1: the sixties, but uh, you know, like the last twenty
Speaker 1: years have kind of feel like just sort of a
Speaker 1: recent blur to me. Like it's it's hard to think
Speaker 1: of those as as important like pillars of time. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's you know, the present always feels kind of unique,
Speaker 1: and and it is only in looking back that you're
Speaker 1: really able with confidence to identify all the ways in
Speaker 1: which the present, for you now the past is like
Speaker 1: the even further past. Yeah. And I guess also we
Speaker 1: have with modern media, of course, we have a more
Speaker 1: global perspective, or we have access to a more global
Speaker 1: perspective at times regarding what's happening in the world. And
Speaker 1: there's also maybe a tendency to want to package everything.
Speaker 1: You know, you need a title for this segment, so
Speaker 1: um and and I guess you could make a case
Speaker 1: for some of that going on in prior ages with
Speaker 1: different you know, writers and commentators. But but yeah, it
Speaker 1: wasn't a situation where you would turn on your global
Speaker 1: news channel and see, you know what we're calling this
Speaker 1: present darkness. Now Here I want to come to Stearns
Speaker 1: is interrogation of some of these generalizations made by made
Speaker 1: by Michael Doles. So I think the first one we
Speaker 1: should look at is this question of did Muslims in
Speaker 1: the at the time of the Black Death generally accept
Speaker 1: a theory of contagion or not? Remember this was doless
Speaker 1: third generalization. He says that there really was no contagion
Speaker 1: of plague in the Muslim conscious, since disease came directly
Speaker 1: from God. It was caused supernaturally, not by any kind
Speaker 1: of physical mechanism that would allow it to spread from
Speaker 1: person to person or in an area. And Starn's argues
Speaker 1: that there's actually a lot at stake in our understanding
Speaker 1: of these kinds of attitudes towards plague, and especially you
Speaker 1: can see how characterizations of this kind get applied to
Speaker 1: situations that they might not really be good analogies. For
Speaker 1: for example, uh he He cites the example of many
Speaker 1: Europeans hundreds of years ago, not like modern historians, but
Speaker 1: people in the sixteenth and seventeen centuries Protestant authors using
Speaker 1: what they believe to be the historical example of Turkish
Speaker 1: Muslim's reaction to the plague within arguments about whether Christians
Speaker 1: had a moral duty to stay in plague gridden areas
Speaker 1: in order to help their Christian neighbors, or whether they
Speaker 1: should uh they should flee the disease in order to
Speaker 1: protect themselves. And authors who advocated fleeing the disease sometimes
Speaker 1: compared their opponents to Turkish Muslims because they believed that
Speaker 1: Turkish Muslims had a fatalistic attitude towards plague and would
Speaker 1: not try to escape it. You can find numerous references
Speaker 1: in the sixteenth and seventeenth century of of European authors
Speaker 1: talking about it like this, like, for example, Leibniz, apparently
Speaker 1: in mounting an argument against fatalism, used Turkish Muslims during
Speaker 1: plague outbreaks as an example of the philosophy of fatalism.
Speaker 1: They failed to escape areas affected by plague even when
Speaker 1: they easily could have, and he regards this, I guess
Speaker 1: as foolish. And here in this question about about the
Speaker 1: belief and contagion in the Muslim world, we actually get
Speaker 1: to a specific historical figure uh, a figure known as
Speaker 1: even al Hatib and uh The Stearns describes al Hatib
Speaker 1: as the prolific and rightly celebrated granad and vizier and
Speaker 1: man of letters. This was a scholar who lived in
Speaker 1: southern Iberia under the Immirate of Granada during the fourteenth
Speaker 1: century uh and in the years after the Black Death,
Speaker 1: al Hatib wrote a famous treatise called on the Plague,
Speaker 1: in which he argued that the plague was in fact contagious,
Speaker 1: despite some some theological judgments to the contrary, and offered
Speaker 1: citations of empirical evidence to prove it. Michael Dole's in
Speaker 1: that piece does acknowledge al Hatib, and on the issue
Speaker 1: of contagions, cites him as one very important exception. So
Speaker 1: Doles writes quote as for the third problem of contagion,
Speaker 1: the Andalusian scholar Iban al Hatib has attracted European attention
Speaker 1: for his observation and forceful statement of the contagious nature
Speaker 1: of the black death. This points, however, to the exceptional
Speaker 1: nature of Ibn al Hatib's belief and the weight of
Speaker 1: opinion against him. Even al Hatib was the only Muslim
Speaker 1: writer to my knowledge to argue against the accepted interpretation
Speaker 1: of plague. His fourth right statement is probably one of
Speaker 1: the portions of his writings which gave support to his
Speaker 1: enemies in their later persecution of him as a heretic um,
Speaker 1: and so in the In the latter thing here this
Speaker 1: refers to the fact that at the at the end
Speaker 1: of his life al Hati was caught up in a
Speaker 1: series of palace coups and political power struggles, after which
Speaker 1: it in one of them he was jailed after being
Speaker 1: convicted by a by a sort of panel of jurists,
Speaker 1: and at some point uh he was murdered in his
Speaker 1: jail cell. He after being tried for heresy, though Starns
Speaker 1: argues that this was not necessarily as a result of
Speaker 1: his comments about the plague and may may have just
Speaker 1: as well been a just kind of a pure power play.
Speaker 1: Like he was murdered by his political opponents, and Stearns
Speaker 1: writes that this series of events quote has been widely
Speaker 1: construed by students of medieval European history as having been
Speaker 1: due to the rigid and intolerant nature of Islam orthodoxy,
Speaker 1: and I suspect a general impression that scientific thought in
Speaker 1: the Muslim world was in decline. Um so uh so.
Speaker 1: Sterns argues that the both of these ideas, that that
Speaker 1: Muslims in general rejected belief in contagion, and that even
Speaker 1: al Hatib was a quote, free thinking exception in a
Speaker 1: sea of fatalistic and narrow minded Muslim jurists and theologians.
Speaker 1: That both of these ideas have been around for a
Speaker 1: long time and are continuously represented in scholarship on the
Speaker 1: Black Death of the period. But Sterns kind of pushes
Speaker 1: back against them. Now. He does seem to agree that
Speaker 1: theological rejection of the theory of contagion was in fact
Speaker 1: the most common view in the pre modern Arab Muslim
Speaker 1: world um, but he says that even al Hatip support
Speaker 1: for contagion theory, rather than being the the single loan
Speaker 1: voice of descent, was actually probably more like a particularly
Speaker 1: rhetorically power full phrasing of a view that was a
Speaker 1: minority opinion but was nevertheless pretty widely held and openly
Speaker 1: discussed by plenty of Muslim jurists. And this may make sense,
Speaker 1: right because outside of of the various like philosophical and
Speaker 1: theological ideas that that either population European or Islamic world
Speaker 1: would have had, there would have been like direct observation,
Speaker 1: there would have been there would have been room to
Speaker 1: realize there's something to the way this illness spreads. There's
Speaker 1: something about physical proximity to other people with the illness
Speaker 1: that you could potentially pick up on, though complicated by
Speaker 1: the fact that, as we discussed in the first episode,
Speaker 1: I mean, the transmission vectors of historical plague outbreaks are
Speaker 1: still somewhat obscure to us today. Like there's still debate
Speaker 1: about to what extent uh plague was spread by contagion
Speaker 1: from other people. Remember in the first episode we talked
Speaker 1: about So there's this idea for a long time that
Speaker 1: play is primarily spread in bubonic form from from bites,
Speaker 1: from fleas, from commence al rodents or other animals, and
Speaker 1: that probably represents some amount of spread. But then there
Speaker 1: are other ways it can spread, so you can get
Speaker 1: the neemonic version of the plague, and then it can
Speaker 1: be spread in aerosolized droplets you know, people cough and
Speaker 1: and spread it person to person that way. And then
Speaker 1: there is this more recent idea that maybe it was
Speaker 1: spread person to person but through the vector of human ectoparasites,
Speaker 1: fleas and lce on people's bodies. But all this to
Speaker 1: say because there is not one single way the plague
Speaker 1: is spreading, but probably multiple different routes, and we're still
Speaker 1: not sure what percentage of transmission these different routes represented. Uh,
Speaker 1: it obviously must have been confusing. Yeah, And I also
Speaker 1: want to stress that, as we've discussed on the show before,
Speaker 1: like observation and common sense do not always lead to
Speaker 1: scientific reality. You know, they can these these you know,
Speaker 1: your gut instinct and just seeming you know, observing how
Speaker 1: the word world works. This can and has at times
Speaker 1: resulted in thoroughly non scientific ideas. So I don't I
Speaker 1: don't want to imply that in either group it was
Speaker 1: just a matter of, oh, well, they just should have
Speaker 1: paid more attention and been more sensible, right, No, No,
Speaker 1: I didn't think you were saying that. Okay, I just
Speaker 1: want to be clear. Yeah, apparently all hat He was
Speaker 1: was mounting empirical arguments for contagion um. But anyway, Sterns
Speaker 1: writes that quote, far from having been accused of heresy
Speaker 1: for his statement on contagion. Even all hats opinions on
Speaker 1: the plague were debated by succeeding generations of scholars, as
Speaker 1: can be seen in a recently published collection of legal
Speaker 1: opinions from the fifteenth century, and in that his eventual
Speaker 1: trial for heresy was most likely politically motivated. You know
Speaker 1: he was there. There was like a power struggle going on.
Speaker 1: And Sterns uses the example of this one UH figure
Speaker 1: to make the point that while some broad trends within
Speaker 1: religious communities can be observed, stern does agree that the
Speaker 1: majority view among Muslim jurists and theologians at the time
Speaker 1: is that plague is not contagious and is caused supernaturally
Speaker 1: by God. But but but just disagrees that Alhati was
Speaker 1: the only person pushing back against this. Again, as as
Speaker 1: he says, it was, it was more like a it
Speaker 1: was a minority view that was expressed and debated. And
Speaker 1: so the broader point I think he's making is that
Speaker 1: you can you can get a much more accurate picture
Speaker 1: of historical trends by understanding the diversity of thought within
Speaker 1: communities at the same time that you're trying to identify
Speaker 1: the the broader overriding trends that described them. And from here,
Speaker 1: Actually this is later in his conclusion that he cites this,
Speaker 1: but I found this really interesting. He quotes a completely
Speaker 1: inverse image of this comparative generalization about about fatalism and
Speaker 1: belief in contagion in response to the plague um So
Speaker 1: he quotes a twenty one century Tunisian scholar who makes
Speaker 1: use of an interesting anecdote from a fourteenth century figure
Speaker 1: named even Marzook alha Feed, and alha Feed writes that
Speaker 1: in in this fourteenth century work that he was sent
Speaker 1: by the Sultan of Tlemson, which is in modern day
Speaker 1: Algeria too on a journey to the Sultan of Fez,
Speaker 1: and at that time there was a great outbreak of
Speaker 1: disease in the stretch of North Africa known as the
Speaker 1: mug Rub and as they traveled through the land um
Speaker 1: this Uh, this figure was accompanied by a group of messengers,
Speaker 1: including one of whom was a Christian. And here I
Speaker 1: just want to read from Stern's citation of of this story,
Speaker 1: of this this fourteenth century uh figure quote. Their intention
Speaker 1: in doing what they did was not to approach the
Speaker 1: epidemic by entering the castle. This was their choice, and
Speaker 1: I was in agreement with them. The Christian asked, what's
Speaker 1: with these people who don't enter this place? His translator,
Speaker 1: as he didn't speak Arabic, well said to him, they
Speaker 1: have fled from the epidemic. Then the Christians said what
Speaker 1: we were told had the following meaning, fleeing will not
Speaker 1: save them. There is no doubt that what God has
Speaker 1: decreed is what will be. When I heard these words,
Speaker 1: I was dismayed and confused about what I was doing,
Speaker 1: as it was well known that according to prophetic tradition,
Speaker 1: one shouldn't approach such an area. I rejected completely that
Speaker 1: it should seem that one who had no knowledge of
Speaker 1: the hadith, who is an unbeliever, should be greater in
Speaker 1: entrusting himself to God's order and more believing in what
Speaker 1: had been decreed. I knew that it was a trial,
Speaker 1: so I advised advancing and entered the castle, though I
Speaker 1: didn't order the others what to do. Uh So this
Speaker 1: is interesting because Stearns notes that there's at least he
Speaker 1: cites a modern Tunisian scholar who has used this historical
Speaker 1: anecdote to argue the exact inverse, that that Christians were
Speaker 1: fatalistic about the Black Death and that though there were
Speaker 1: a diversity of views among Muslims, some argue for fleeing
Speaker 1: the plague and establishing quarantines on the basis of contagion theory.
Speaker 1: Uh So, I thought that was funny about how it
Speaker 1: can go both ways and uh And while there is
Speaker 1: of course a lot to be learned from comparative studies
Speaker 1: of religious interpretation and natural events, this kind of project
Speaker 1: can also just make it so tempting to make misleading
Speaker 1: generalizations on the basis of a single anecdote that you're
Speaker 1: aware of and and sort of gloss over internal diversity
Speaker 1: and disagreement than now. Stearns make some other points in
Speaker 1: this paper that I think go to apart from the
Speaker 1: contagion point, the other two characterizations that were made by
Speaker 1: Michael Doles. The first one was that plague was generally
Speaker 1: viewed as a mercy from God and a martyrdom for
Speaker 1: the faithful Muslim, and second that a Muslim should not
Speaker 1: enter nor flee a plague stricken land. And on these subjects,
Speaker 1: I thought this was interesting and and this goes along
Speaker 1: with something that I think comes through in several places
Speaker 1: in in Starns argument, which is that he argues that
Speaker 1: there's often more similarity between the three different religions responses
Speaker 1: than is appreciated, and that sometimes these theological debates about
Speaker 1: the plague are actually largely reproduced within each monotheistic religious community,
Speaker 1: so they share some similarities in their internal controversies and reactions.
Speaker 1: But he does argue, as uh Dolls, I do think
Speaker 1: acknowledge somewhat that there were also views within the Muslim
Speaker 1: world that characterized the plague as a punishment for sin,
Speaker 1: as like the dominant view in Christian Europe was, and
Speaker 1: that in fact, in some cases some Jewish sources from
Speaker 1: the time mentioned plague as being a punishment for sin
Speaker 1: as well. This just seems like this is a commonplace
Speaker 1: for the monotheistic religions to go mentally. And as for
Speaker 1: some of these interesting internal controversy, Stearns talks about some
Speaker 1: conflict even between some ideas mentioned here, like for example,
Speaker 1: he goes on to explain some of the origins of
Speaker 1: the prophetic tradition that one should neither enter nor leave
Speaker 1: an area where that is stricken by plague um. And
Speaker 1: he says that these these prophetic traditions, they gave rise
Speaker 1: to some some difficulties in reconciling them with each other
Speaker 1: that had to be in these differences had to be
Speaker 1: sorted out by later Muslim jurists and theologians. So, for example,
Speaker 1: one contradiction might be, on one hand, you have a
Speaker 1: belief that dying of plague can be a form of martyrdom,
Speaker 1: which is an honorable and good death, a mercy from God.
Speaker 1: And then on the other hand, you can have the
Speaker 1: belief that if plague is in an area, you shouldn't
Speaker 1: enter it. And so you could view these things as
Speaker 1: as possibly being in contradiction with each other. But much
Speaker 1: like as we saw with the Christian tradition, I think
Speaker 1: Stern's idea here is that this just sort of gives
Speaker 1: rise to competing takes. Well, like with any other religion,
Speaker 1: you've got some authorities emphasizing one half of the tradition,
Speaker 1: some authorities emphasizing the other, uh some making mention a
Speaker 1: little mention of either one, and just sort of telling
Speaker 1: people to get away from the plague. So this does
Speaker 1: make me think about a point of comparison that kept
Speaker 1: occurring to me which was really funny, which is like
Speaker 1: just the trouble you get into if you just assume
Speaker 1: or try to infer religious beliefs and practices from the
Speaker 1: canonical traditions or scripture of a religion, it would be
Speaker 1: like trying to do you think you could infer what
Speaker 1: Christians believe just by like looking at passages in the Bible.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, if you just draw one sometimes read it
Speaker 1: out of context. Yeah, it can. You could. You could
Speaker 1: make all sorts of of of of blanket statements, you know,
Speaker 1: in terms of thinking about um, about illness as uh
Speaker 1: and disease as being a martyrdom Um. I'm I'm reminded
Speaker 1: of something from from from from later centuries in UM
Speaker 1: in European tradition, the the Eisenheim altarpiece by Matthias Grunwald. Uh.
Speaker 1: This would have been the the early sixteenth century. But
Speaker 1: these are famous depictions in which we see Christ himself
Speaker 1: uh suffering from some sort of skin disease. Uh that
Speaker 1: that I believe is thought to be ergotism. But but
Speaker 1: in these cases of physical disease, physical ailment. It takes on,
Speaker 1: you know, the trappings of holy suffering. Well, yeah, that's
Speaker 1: a really good point. And actually this is a thing
Speaker 1: that Sarns mentioned. I I skipped over it, But there
Speaker 1: is a part where he points out that actually thinking
Speaker 1: of death from plague as as a form of martyrdom
Speaker 1: is not totally unique to to Islam. There's all. There
Speaker 1: are also Christian traditions that characterize plague death as a martyrdom.
Speaker 1: They're not they're not extremely common in Christianity, but he cites,
Speaker 1: for example, Cyprian who apparently held this view that you
Speaker 1: could be a martyr after dying from plague, or maybe
Speaker 1: not plague specifically, I'm not sure, but from certainly from
Speaker 1: epidemic disease. Another interesting point of similarity I was noticing
Speaker 1: is and reading about Sterns and then thinking about some
Speaker 1: of the stuff we talked about in the last episode.
Speaker 1: Uh was the idea of of public demonstrations in response
Speaker 1: to plague, like public processions of various kinds. For example,
Speaker 1: Sterns writes that a common response to plague in Muslim
Speaker 1: cities throughout the Middle East was for people to go
Speaker 1: outside the city and fast and pray in groups. Uh.
Speaker 1: And this is he says, similar to how Muslims might
Speaker 1: often appeal for deliverance from other disasters, non disease disasters
Speaker 1: like drought. You know, they might gather outside the city
Speaker 1: to fast and pray for rain. But there's another thing
Speaker 1: I really take away from these discussions, which is something
Speaker 1: that that Sterns emphasizes in this paper, uh, which is
Speaker 1: that there's still a lot to learn and that is
Speaker 1: potentially available to learn. Uh. Not just like is is
Speaker 1: definitely lost to history, because he says there are plenty
Speaker 1: of plague treatises from the time period, especially reflecting Jewish
Speaker 1: and Muslim views that he says quotes still languish in manuscript.
Speaker 1: So I think what that would mean is that there
Speaker 1: are cases where we have some kind of artifact. Original
Speaker 1: manuscripts do exist, but they are waiting for for scholars
Speaker 1: to get to them. Basically, we're waiting on them to
Speaker 1: be edited and translated. So there's still a lot more
Speaker 1: to learn about the period. So he suspects these will
Speaker 1: probably further tell against blanket generalizations of religious responses and
Speaker 1: might reveal more and more internal diversity of thought. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because if this is it is true that basically within
Speaker 1: any of these faiths we're discussing, you had the same
Speaker 1: sort of arguments going on, the same sort of of discussions,
Speaker 1: then that will just be further illuminated through the translations
Speaker 1: of these in the in the saving of these old texts. Yeah, Now,
Speaker 1: one thing I wanted to come back to before we
Speaker 1: wrap it up is that paper I quoted at the
Speaker 1: beginning of the episode, the paper by nu Quat Varlik
Speaker 1: from the Journal of World History in called from bett
Speaker 1: Noir to Limala, Constantinople, Plagues, medicine and the early modern
Speaker 1: Ottoman state. And so in this paper she she traces
Speaker 1: an interesting history. So she makes an argument that within
Speaker 1: the Ottoman Empire, so this would be the Muslim Empire
Speaker 1: based out of Anatolia modern day Turkey, that eventually spreads
Speaker 1: and and controls much of the Middle East and North
Speaker 1: Africa and parts of eastern Europe. She says that there
Speaker 1: is a transformation over time of how plague is conceptualized
Speaker 1: and this this happens especially in the sixteenth century, and
Speaker 1: this is something that's really important to consider too. We've
Speaker 1: been talking about trying to appreciate the nuances within religious
Speaker 1: communities and the internal diversity. But also it's important to
Speaker 1: remember how views even of a single religious community change
Speaker 1: over time. So she says that before the sixteenth century,
Speaker 1: plague is seen mostly in religious terms, like we've been
Speaker 1: talking about with the quote, with the general outlines of
Speaker 1: an Islamic plague cosmology, which had God and divine agency
Speaker 1: at its very core. And so under this view, like
Speaker 1: we've been saying, most the most common belief is that
Speaker 1: epidemic diseases were sent directly from God and only God
Speaker 1: had the power to alleviate your suffering. Uh. Though within
Speaker 1: this supernatural framework, of course, you could appeal to other
Speaker 1: supernatural interventions, such as the intercession of saints. And that
Speaker 1: makes me think about the story we started with with
Speaker 1: the uh, you know, the saintly figure in green, and
Speaker 1: she writes in her conclusion quote. In this configuration, disease
Speaker 1: was seen as an unfamiliar and unruly presence, a presence
Speaker 1: that the Ottomans imagine themselves as having no control over,
Speaker 1: even in the medical works of the era. This supernatural
Speaker 1: vision was juxtaposed with the perplexing amalgamation of knowledge they
Speaker 1: had recourse to, which must have only confirmed perceived feelings
Speaker 1: of vulnerability. But then then after this, uh she she
Speaker 1: charts how during the sixteenth century especially, there is a
Speaker 1: pretty rapid transformation of attitudes towards plague in the Ottoman Empire,
Speaker 1: including a shift from a majority supernatural view of disease
Speaker 1: to a much more natural and medical view of disease. So,
Speaker 1: instead of being viewed as as strange and unfamiliar threats
Speaker 1: over which we had no control, diseases came to be
Speaker 1: seen more as a quote familiar aspect of the natural realm,
Speaker 1: just one part of how the world works, and something
Speaker 1: that we do have some kind of power to intervene against.
Speaker 1: And so this took the form of a new corpus
Speaker 1: of scientific knowledge about epidemic disease that was developed in
Speaker 1: in the sixteenth century. And and uh this would include
Speaker 1: discoveries about the causes, transmission, and prevention of infectious disease,
Speaker 1: and that this new knowledge led to changes in public
Speaker 1: health policy from the Ottoman state. It sort of took
Speaker 1: plague from being a predominantly supernatural issue and made it
Speaker 1: instead a political problem. But that does seem the healthier
Speaker 1: trajective for things to take, you know, to to go
Speaker 1: from the supernatural to the the idea that, yes, this
Speaker 1: is something that can be managed on some level. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And it's interesting to think also though that um. I mean,
Speaker 1: among all of these religious communities, Christians, Jews, and Muslims
Speaker 1: all still today have religious um approaches to disease, even
Speaker 1: if they would probably rely on science based medicine as
Speaker 1: the primary intervention and way to prevent disease and and
Speaker 1: and heal yourself from disease if you do catch it. Uh.
Speaker 1: It's interesting that like it, uh, the the introduction of
Speaker 1: science based medicine is the primary effective way of combating
Speaker 1: disease has not removed the religious response to disease, right right,
Speaker 1: I mean, all of these communities still have religious thoughts
Speaker 1: about epidemics and still pray about them and all that.
Speaker 1: I guess another thing that's just this whole discussion really
Speaker 1: drives home is how amazingly lucky we are in terms
Speaker 1: of the medical interventions that exist today. I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: we everybody's exhausted living through a pandemic for the past
Speaker 1: however many god awful months this thing has been. But
Speaker 1: I mean, we're we're so lucky to have the kind
Speaker 1: of the vaccines and the other interventions that we have
Speaker 1: today that we're just not on the table for for
Speaker 1: people in the fourteenth century. Yeah. Absolutely. By the way,
Speaker 1: earlier I mentioned a Polish language anti Semitic poster, and
Speaker 1: I just wanted to throw in a little more information
Speaker 1: on this because I kind of referred to it in passing.
Speaker 1: But this is the post. You can find at the
Speaker 1: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum's website at u s h
Speaker 1: g M M dot org um, where it's labeled anti
Speaker 1: Semitic poster published in Poland in March nineteen one. Quote.
Speaker 1: An anti Semitic poster published in Poland in March ninety one.
Speaker 1: The caption reads Jews our life, they cause typhus. Uh.
Speaker 1: This German published poster was intended to instill fear of
Speaker 1: Jews among Christian polls unquote. So I just wanted to
Speaker 1: provide additional, uh, additional backstory on on that particular post
Speaker 1: roads referring to, and you can look it up if
Speaker 1: you visit this website. All Right, Well, this has been
Speaker 1: a fun multipart examination here, and uh, I believe we're
Speaker 1: gonna move on to other topics at this point, but
Speaker 1: we would love to hear from everyone out there. If
Speaker 1: you have particular insight, uh, if these episodes have touched
Speaker 1: on an area of expertise or or interest and you
Speaker 1: would like to weigh in, then by all means, we'd
Speaker 1: love to hear from you, and it's not impossible that
Speaker 1: we could return to this topic if it looks like
Speaker 1: there's some some interesting angles, uh that that need further
Speaker 1: exploration in the meantime, if you would like to check
Speaker 1: out other episodes of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, you
Speaker 1: will find find them in the Stuff to Blow your
Speaker 1: Mind podcast feed which you will get wherever you happen
Speaker 1: to grab your podcasts. We have core episodes on Tuesdays
Speaker 1: and Thursdays, we have listener mail on Monday's Artifact on Wednesdays,
Speaker 1: and on Friday we do a little Weird House Cinema.
Speaker 1: That's our time to set aside most of the science
Speaker 1: and just talk about a strange film. And on the
Speaker 1: weekends we do a vault episode. Huge thanks as always
Speaker 1: to our excellent audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson. If you
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