WEBVTT - God and the Black Death, Part 3 0:00:00.160 --> 0:00:04.720 My Plague. Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, the 0:00:04.800 --> 0:00:14.200 production of My Heart Radio. Hey, welcome to Stuff to 0:00:14.240 --> 0:00:17.080 Blow your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb and I'm 0:00:17.120 --> 0:00:19.400 Joe McCormick, and we're back with part three of our 0:00:19.440 --> 0:00:24.160 talk about the plague, the Second Plague, pandemic, the Black Death, 0:00:24.760 --> 0:00:28.440 and specifically some religious responses to it now in parts 0:00:28.520 --> 0:00:31.520 one and two. In part one, we sort of focused 0:00:31.560 --> 0:00:36.080 on the plague itself, some questions about how it was transmitted, 0:00:36.560 --> 0:00:40.400 what the different pandemics looked like, and so forth. And 0:00:40.440 --> 0:00:43.920 then in the second episode we focused largely on religious 0:00:43.960 --> 0:00:47.600 responses to the plague in Christian Europe. Today, we wanted 0:00:47.640 --> 0:00:50.760 to expand talking about religious responses to the plague and 0:00:50.760 --> 0:00:54.720 talk about some historical work on Islamic responses. But to 0:00:54.800 --> 0:00:57.320 begin this discussion, I wanted to start by reading a 0:00:57.400 --> 0:01:00.560 wonderful tale that I came across in a paper by 0:01:00.560 --> 0:01:03.160 a scholar that I'm going to be referring to later 0:01:03.160 --> 0:01:07.720 in this episode. So this story was originally told by 0:01:07.840 --> 0:01:12.120 an Ottoman historian in the late fifteenth century about events 0:01:12.160 --> 0:01:15.800 that allegedly happened I think in northwest Anatolia, which is 0:01:15.920 --> 0:01:19.720 modern day Turkey. And the translation and retelling of the 0:01:19.760 --> 0:01:23.800 story is by a modern historian named Neuquat Varlik, who 0:01:23.800 --> 0:01:26.120 I believe is currently a professor in the history department 0:01:26.160 --> 0:01:28.959 at the University of South Carolina. But Rob, if you're ready, 0:01:28.959 --> 0:01:32.160 I'm gonna read this tale, let's do it. On the 0:01:32.240 --> 0:01:36.280 first night of January of fourteen Nino, while transporting a 0:01:36.360 --> 0:01:41.039 load from Gallipoli to Aderna with other fellow laborers, a 0:01:41.040 --> 0:01:44.679 wagon driver had an accident in bully year when his 0:01:44.800 --> 0:01:47.400 ox was injured on the road and could not move 0:01:47.400 --> 0:01:50.800 any further. His fellow drivers went to town to bring help, 0:01:51.200 --> 0:01:54.600 leaving him alone to spend the night on the accident site. 0:01:55.240 --> 0:01:58.720 Later that evening, when the unfortunate wagon driver was crying 0:01:58.760 --> 0:02:02.480 in despair, he suddenly heard a loud noise, whereupon he 0:02:02.520 --> 0:02:07.440 saw two horsemen in black attire astride black horses, racing 0:02:07.480 --> 0:02:10.720 toward him. In fear, he hid under the wagon and 0:02:10.760 --> 0:02:14.960 watched them going by like a lightning. Immediately after them, 0:02:15.000 --> 0:02:18.480 a horseman in green attire, riding a pale horse and 0:02:18.560 --> 0:02:23.280 waving a lightning whip, came by and called out to him, Oh, 0:02:23.360 --> 0:02:26.880 you driver, have you seen two horsemen in black attire 0:02:27.040 --> 0:02:30.520 riding black horses. When the driver showed him in which 0:02:30.560 --> 0:02:33.480 direction they went. The horseman then asked the driver what 0:02:33.560 --> 0:02:36.440 he was waiting for. Once the driver told him about 0:02:36.440 --> 0:02:40.120 the accident, the horseman descended from his horse and touched 0:02:40.160 --> 0:02:43.359 the leg of the ox three times, and the beast 0:02:43.480 --> 0:02:47.960 was miraculously healed. Upon seeing this, the driver moved toward 0:02:48.000 --> 0:02:52.240 the horseman in gratitude and inquired about his whereabouts. The 0:02:52.280 --> 0:02:56.760 horseman revealed himself as profit his ear helping those in need. 0:02:57.240 --> 0:03:00.919 He added that he was chasing The horseman quote. They 0:03:00.919 --> 0:03:05.880 are pestilence and plague. They live among people God sent them. 0:03:05.919 --> 0:03:08.919 They obey the orders of God. I have received an 0:03:09.000 --> 0:03:12.600 order from God to expel them. They were eight in total. 0:03:12.800 --> 0:03:15.480 I killed six of them. If I can kill those 0:03:15.520 --> 0:03:18.560 two before they reached the seashore, there shall not be 0:03:18.600 --> 0:03:22.880 another plague for thirty years. Oh wow, I kind of 0:03:22.880 --> 0:03:24.639 want to see the rest of the movie. I mean, 0:03:24.639 --> 0:03:28.040 this is this sound, this is delightfully cinematic. Yeah, the 0:03:28.080 --> 0:03:31.320 writers in black the ring rights and then yeah, a hero, 0:03:31.520 --> 0:03:34.320 a hero in green with a lightning whip upon a 0:03:34.320 --> 0:03:38.960 pale horse chasing down plague to kill it. Ye, so 0:03:39.160 --> 0:03:43.080 this tale was originally set down by a fifteenth century 0:03:43.120 --> 0:03:47.600 Ottoman chronicler named Rooch, and I found the retelling in 0:03:47.640 --> 0:03:52.720 a paper called from bett Noir to lemal de Constantinople, Plagues, 0:03:52.880 --> 0:03:56.920 Medicine and the Early modern Ottoman State by an author 0:03:57.000 --> 0:04:01.960 named Nuquet Varlik in the Journal of World History. And 0:04:02.080 --> 0:04:04.720 this is a paper that documents evidence of how the 0:04:04.800 --> 0:04:09.480 conceptualization of plague and the administrative reaction to it within 0:04:09.520 --> 0:04:12.800 the Ottoman Empire changed over the course of several centuries. 0:04:12.840 --> 0:04:17.200 But regarding that tale itself, one fact I found funny 0:04:17.279 --> 0:04:20.560 was that despite the supernatural details that make it seem 0:04:20.600 --> 0:04:24.760 like an obvious piece of creative storytelling, the original chronicler 0:04:25.000 --> 0:04:27.599 or Roach apparently claims that it is based on the 0:04:27.640 --> 0:04:31.680 testimony of several trustworthy witnesses. So I'm not sure what 0:04:31.760 --> 0:04:35.039 to make of that, but anyway, Varlec highlights it in 0:04:35.200 --> 0:04:40.920 her paper as a fascinating example of popular plague narrative 0:04:41.000 --> 0:04:44.720 and one that reveals some common features of thought about 0:04:44.800 --> 0:04:48.760 epidemic disease in the Ottoman Empire. So apparently this story 0:04:48.839 --> 0:04:52.400 bears strong resemblance to other tales like it going back 0:04:52.440 --> 0:04:55.960 to the early Islamic period in which there's usually like 0:04:56.000 --> 0:04:59.839 a man in green riding a pale horse who appear 0:05:00.160 --> 0:05:03.880 in times of epidemic, disease or other struggle and helps 0:05:03.920 --> 0:05:07.800 people rid themselves of pestilence or rid themselves of gin, 0:05:08.040 --> 0:05:11.520 which are a form of supernatural creature, kind of demon 0:05:11.600 --> 0:05:14.440 that might be made of air or flame. Uh. And 0:05:14.480 --> 0:05:17.600 there are other common elements to such as the figure 0:05:17.640 --> 0:05:21.520 in green uh touching, the touching a wound, or touching 0:05:21.520 --> 0:05:24.520 an animal or say a leg three times in order 0:05:24.560 --> 0:05:27.680 to heal it. And so the hero in this story 0:05:27.760 --> 0:05:30.279 given given the name Heasy or here is also known 0:05:30.440 --> 0:05:34.120 I've seen spelled as al Keter or al kadir uh 0:05:34.320 --> 0:05:37.279 some those. That's sometimes like a l k h a 0:05:37.400 --> 0:05:40.440 d I r, which means the green One, I believe, 0:05:40.480 --> 0:05:43.400 though I think there's some etymological debate about where that 0:05:43.480 --> 0:05:45.599 name comes from. It's largely taken, I think to me 0:05:45.600 --> 0:05:48.640 in the Green One or the Verdant One. He's a 0:05:48.720 --> 0:05:52.640 sort of saint or guardian angel type figure who appears 0:05:52.680 --> 0:05:57.120 in Islamic lore going very far back. So Varlex says 0:05:57.200 --> 0:06:00.680 this story would have had very familiar narrative of elements 0:06:00.720 --> 0:06:05.080 to listeners and readers. In fifteenth century Anatolia. But there 0:06:05.080 --> 0:06:09.440 are also unusual elements, For example, the portrayal of plague 0:06:09.520 --> 0:06:14.040 and pestilence as writers in black is, she says, otherwise 0:06:14.200 --> 0:06:17.039 rare or perhaps even unique to this story at this 0:06:17.080 --> 0:06:21.000 point in Ottoman literature. Though It's interesting to me because 0:06:21.040 --> 0:06:24.599 at least now that's a motif that seems utterly natural, 0:06:24.839 --> 0:06:27.799 Like depicting plague as embodied as a as a writer 0:06:27.920 --> 0:06:30.400 wearing a black cloak on a black horse like that. 0:06:30.400 --> 0:06:32.960 That that seems like something I would have encountered in 0:06:33.040 --> 0:06:35.840 stories all the time. So I'm wondering if it comes 0:06:35.920 --> 0:06:38.720 from this or if there there are parallel traditions in 0:06:39.000 --> 0:06:42.640 other cultures. Yeah, because certainly from a Western perspective and 0:06:42.760 --> 0:06:45.839 with the benefit of of you know, multiple centuries to 0:06:45.920 --> 0:06:49.600 look back on, and that's the grim Reaper, the black 0:06:49.920 --> 0:06:53.200 hooded figure like this is just such a staple of 0:06:53.200 --> 0:06:57.120 of Western traditions and Western depictions of of evil and 0:06:57.240 --> 0:07:00.599 uh and these these forces of destruction. Yeah, but did 0:07:00.600 --> 0:07:04.080 it exist within Islamic thought or with an Ottoman thought 0:07:04.120 --> 0:07:07.440 at the time beyond this one story that is? Yeah, 0:07:07.520 --> 0:07:10.480 And so Varlex says, this story is actually a pretty 0:07:10.600 --> 0:07:15.400 excellent reflection of how Ottoman Muslims of the of the 0:07:15.440 --> 0:07:19.360 time period generally thought about plague as part of what 0:07:19.440 --> 0:07:24.360 she she calls the Islamic plague cosmology of the fifteenth century, 0:07:24.400 --> 0:07:28.120 which she characterizes as a system of explanations that are 0:07:28.200 --> 0:07:34.000 ultimately revolving around divine causation around God. So she writes, quote, 0:07:34.200 --> 0:07:37.920 according to this, plagues were inflicted upon humans by God, 0:07:38.040 --> 0:07:41.000 and God alone had the power to relieve humans from 0:07:41.040 --> 0:07:44.720 this ill In its broadest outlines, this vision of divine 0:07:44.760 --> 0:07:48.520 origins and agency prevailed in the Islamic world throughout the ages, 0:07:48.840 --> 0:07:52.720 and as such remained the predominant discourse circulating both orally 0:07:52.840 --> 0:07:55.640 and in written texts. And so in this way it 0:07:55.680 --> 0:07:58.760 sounds at least in part comparable to what we discussed 0:07:58.760 --> 0:08:02.040 in the previous episode where arting Christian Europe, which was 0:08:02.080 --> 0:08:04.200 that there may have been many different beliefs at the 0:08:04.240 --> 0:08:07.320 time in Christian Europe about the proximate causes of plague. 0:08:07.360 --> 0:08:10.040 You know, wasn't mi asthma type of bad air that's 0:08:10.080 --> 0:08:14.720 pervading the town's or was it astrological causes? You know, 0:08:14.800 --> 0:08:17.560 was it a conjunction of the planets coming into a 0:08:17.640 --> 0:08:22.600 terrible catastrophic alignment or earthquakes releasing vapors from the ground 0:08:22.720 --> 0:08:27.280 or something, but whatever the proximate causes, where most authors 0:08:27.320 --> 0:08:29.920 in Christian Europe at the time would generally trace the 0:08:29.960 --> 0:08:33.880 causal chain at some point back to divine will God 0:08:34.000 --> 0:08:38.280 sent this plague. But regarding the Islamic views on the 0:08:38.320 --> 0:08:40.200 causes of plague, I do want to be clear that 0:08:40.360 --> 0:08:45.439 Varlik qualifies this characterization by stressing that there is not 0:08:45.600 --> 0:08:50.360 just one monolithic Islamic tradition, nor was there only one 0:08:50.520 --> 0:08:53.560 type of view held by Muslims at the time, And 0:08:53.640 --> 0:08:56.360 in fact, the rest of her paper after this opening 0:08:56.360 --> 0:09:00.800 story is devoted to showing how the multiple courses in 0:09:00.880 --> 0:09:05.800 Ottoman society, beginning mostly under this umbrella of Islamic plague 0:09:05.800 --> 0:09:09.600 cosmology where where basically all of the causes of plague 0:09:09.640 --> 0:09:12.959 are divine, how that evolved over the years and then 0:09:13.080 --> 0:09:18.160 especially during the sixteenth century, transformed into a radically different 0:09:18.240 --> 0:09:21.720 and more medical or naturalistic theory of the causes of 0:09:21.720 --> 0:09:25.440 plague and what the appropriate responses to it should be. Yeah, 0:09:25.600 --> 0:09:28.800 I think it's also worth remembering that the Islamic world 0:09:28.880 --> 0:09:31.520 during the centuries we're talking about here, they had access 0:09:31.559 --> 0:09:33.800 to a great deal of important knowledge, in some cases 0:09:33.880 --> 0:09:38.360 knowledge that had essentially been lost to Western Europe and 0:09:38.600 --> 0:09:43.200 and sometimes only accessed again in Europe through Islamic texts. So, 0:09:43.520 --> 0:09:47.040 you know, in Western centric imaginings of things, it might 0:09:47.040 --> 0:09:49.280 be easy to you know, to dream up this world 0:09:49.320 --> 0:09:52.559 of monkst libraries, nights, and peasants on one hand, and 0:09:52.600 --> 0:09:57.880 then this monolithic religion on the other. But the Islamic 0:09:57.920 --> 0:10:01.120 world harbored some of the greatest minds of age. Well, yeah, 0:10:01.240 --> 0:10:03.880 a lot of European wisdom of the time was actually 0:10:03.920 --> 0:10:07.120 derived from works produced by the Islamic world in the 0:10:07.120 --> 0:10:10.400 Middle Ages. Say from a big example that we referenced 0:10:10.400 --> 0:10:13.160 in a previous episode is uh the the Persian poly 0:10:13.280 --> 0:10:17.560 math Avicenna, who is you know, sometimes considered one of 0:10:17.600 --> 0:10:21.160 the the fathers of modern medicine, and that his work 0:10:21.280 --> 0:10:24.360 was very influential not just in the Islamic world, but 0:10:24.440 --> 0:10:27.080 also in Christian Europe. Now, I want to come back 0:10:27.120 --> 0:10:31.040 and revisit uh varlecks paper a little bit later in 0:10:31.080 --> 0:10:33.400 the episode, but for a bit I'd like to shift 0:10:33.440 --> 0:10:37.680 to talk about some of the major themes in the 0:10:37.760 --> 0:10:42.480 existing comparative analysis of how Christians and Muslims responded to 0:10:42.600 --> 0:10:45.240 the Black Death and its recurrent waves because I know 0:10:45.320 --> 0:10:47.240 this was one of the things that got you interested 0:10:47.800 --> 0:10:49.720 in this subject to begin with, But then it was 0:10:49.760 --> 0:10:51.720 one of those subjects where as soon as you start 0:10:51.760 --> 0:10:54.000 to get a peek in through the window, you realize 0:10:54.040 --> 0:10:57.920 that it's like very complex. There's and like every time 0:10:57.960 --> 0:10:59.839 you read something and you think you know a fact, 0:11:00.040 --> 0:11:02.760 then there's like you read something else and realize, oh no, 0:11:03.040 --> 0:11:05.880 maybe that's not as clear as it once seemed. Um 0:11:05.960 --> 0:11:07.880 And and this seems to be a common feature not 0:11:08.000 --> 0:11:12.240 just of comparing Christian and Islamic reactions to say, plague 0:11:12.280 --> 0:11:14.720 in the Middle Ages, but a common feature of the 0:11:14.800 --> 0:11:18.680 history of comparative religious analysis. Uh, you know, I'd like 0:11:18.760 --> 0:11:21.840 comparative religious analysis. It's really interesting. You can learn a 0:11:21.840 --> 0:11:25.719 lot from comparing and contrasting different religious traditions. But it's 0:11:25.760 --> 0:11:29.040 also very, very tricky. It's one of those subject areas 0:11:29.559 --> 0:11:34.319 where you can easily be tempted into forming inaccurate generalizations 0:11:34.360 --> 0:11:38.000 on the basis of a small set of evidence. And 0:11:38.080 --> 0:11:40.160 you and you've got a kind of natural zeal to 0:11:40.360 --> 0:11:43.440 identify patterns and trends. You want to be able to 0:11:43.480 --> 0:11:47.640 make general statements and make characterizations so it looks like 0:11:47.679 --> 0:11:51.480 you have actually discovered facts that generally hold true. But 0:11:51.559 --> 0:11:54.680 sometimes the you know, the the zeal to make facts 0:11:54.679 --> 0:11:58.160 statements of that kind overcomes what should be some caution 0:11:58.679 --> 0:12:02.520 and what what should what should be caution and humility 0:12:02.559 --> 0:12:05.720 in the face of trying to characterize something as complex 0:12:05.800 --> 0:12:09.200 as a religious response. Actually, remember this came up when 0:12:09.200 --> 0:12:13.839 we were reading papers about iconic versus an iconic religious traditions. 0:12:13.920 --> 0:12:17.679 You know, it seems like scholars who engage in comparative 0:12:17.720 --> 0:12:21.400 religious analysis today are increasingly conscious of the need to 0:12:21.440 --> 0:12:25.199 be kind of frugal and tentative with generalizations about the 0:12:25.240 --> 0:12:29.120 similarities and differences between entire religions and the communities that 0:12:29.160 --> 0:12:33.960 practice them, because comparing and contrasting to religions isn't like 0:12:34.120 --> 0:12:38.360 comparing and contrasting the features of geometrical shapes, you know, 0:12:38.400 --> 0:12:40.679 like you can list the the all of the differences 0:12:40.679 --> 0:12:44.480 and similarities between a right triangle and an Isosceles triangle 0:12:44.600 --> 0:12:48.319 or something. But but you know, religions are extremely complex 0:12:48.360 --> 0:12:51.520 social phenomena, and sometimes you're not even aware of what 0:12:51.640 --> 0:12:54.360 you're missing out on. As a function of the sources 0:12:54.400 --> 0:12:57.320 of evidence available to you. Yeah, Like I think we've 0:12:57.320 --> 0:13:00.080 discussed this in terms of say Buddhism, for example. Know, 0:13:00.160 --> 0:13:02.920 I mean you can if you talk very generally about Buddhism, 0:13:02.960 --> 0:13:07.480 what are you accounting for the different regional versions of 0:13:07.240 --> 0:13:09.760 of of the faith? Are you dealing with the different 0:13:09.880 --> 0:13:14.320 um different social levels within a given community, Like, there's 0:13:14.360 --> 0:13:16.959 so many different divisions that can be uh, you can 0:13:17.000 --> 0:13:18.640 you can pull on and if you're just being very 0:13:18.679 --> 0:13:20.880 general about it, Yeah, it might help you prop up 0:13:20.880 --> 0:13:24.160 a point you're trying to make, but you're certainly not 0:13:24.200 --> 0:13:27.600 gonna be doing a fair job of of speaking to 0:13:28.040 --> 0:13:31.160 how that particular model of faith. Uh uh you know 0:13:31.240 --> 0:13:35.480 impacts uh, you know, the human condition at large. I mean, 0:13:35.520 --> 0:13:38.240 I think about how difficult it is to make accurate 0:13:38.280 --> 0:13:43.880 generalizations about something as complex as a religion, even when 0:13:43.920 --> 0:13:46.560 you live amongst it, Like how how would you make 0:13:46.600 --> 0:13:52.040 accurate characterizations about, say, Catholicism in twenty first century America, 0:13:52.200 --> 0:13:54.760 even though like you probably know a bunch of Catholics 0:13:54.760 --> 0:13:57.360 in America in the twenty first century and like you know, 0:13:57.440 --> 0:13:59.840 you you you're immersed in a culture in which this 0:13:59.880 --> 0:14:03.040 is this is one part of it. Um. Uh so 0:14:03.120 --> 0:14:04.680 it seems like you should have a really good view 0:14:04.679 --> 0:14:06.760 about it, but then it's still probably hard to make 0:14:06.800 --> 0:14:09.360 accurate generalizations. And now imagine you had to make those 0:14:09.360 --> 0:14:13.440 generalizations hundreds of years later, working off of a select 0:14:13.600 --> 0:14:16.800 number of surviving books from the period, and that's pretty 0:14:16.880 --> 0:14:19.080 much it. So anyway, all that to say that when 0:14:19.080 --> 0:14:21.800 you engage in this type of stuff, it's important to 0:14:21.800 --> 0:14:24.360 have a spirit of humility and and be cautious about 0:14:24.360 --> 0:14:26.920 how much you think you know. And following from that, 0:14:27.080 --> 0:14:29.960 something we talked about in the previous episodes is that, 0:14:30.080 --> 0:14:33.400 much like the scientific history of the plague pandemic itself, 0:14:34.000 --> 0:14:38.760 the subject of the Islamic response religious response to plague 0:14:38.800 --> 0:14:42.440 has undergone some revision and re examination in recent decades. 0:14:42.600 --> 0:14:45.280 And uh so here I think maybe it makes sense 0:14:45.280 --> 0:14:49.480 to introduce two different papers that I've been looking at, 0:14:50.000 --> 0:14:52.280 uh to introduce what seems to me to be one 0:14:52.760 --> 0:14:57.000 an example of sort of the dominant historical characterizations from 0:14:57.560 --> 0:15:00.520 uh say, the late twentieth century, along side a more 0:15:00.520 --> 0:15:03.040 recent paper I found talking about some re examination of 0:15:03.080 --> 0:15:07.040 those claims. So to start with the older characterizations, I'll 0:15:07.080 --> 0:15:10.240 refer to a paper I quoted in the previous episode 0:15:10.760 --> 0:15:13.400 It's a piece called the Comparative Communal Responses to the 0:15:13.440 --> 0:15:17.000 Black Death in Muslim and Christian Societies by Michael W. Dolls, 0:15:17.720 --> 0:15:21.680 published in the nineteen seventies. This is the historian Michael W. Dolls, 0:15:21.720 --> 0:15:25.240 who lived nineteen forty two to nineteen eighty nine. And 0:15:25.400 --> 0:15:28.560 this piece was actually the place I found that description 0:15:28.640 --> 0:15:31.760 of the plague from the fourteenth century North African Muslim 0:15:31.840 --> 0:15:35.240 historian Eben Caldoon, which was you remember that really haunting 0:15:35.320 --> 0:15:38.640 description of like the city's being emptied and the way 0:15:38.680 --> 0:15:41.000 signs falling away, And what did he say? It was 0:15:41.040 --> 0:15:43.600 as if the voice of existence in the world had 0:15:43.640 --> 0:15:46.680 called out for oblivion, and restriction in the world had 0:15:46.760 --> 0:15:50.760 responded to its call. Yeah, but anyway, so that that's 0:15:50.840 --> 0:15:53.160 the Dolls piece I'm gonna be looking at, but then 0:15:53.200 --> 0:15:56.800 also providing some more recent or revised understanding, though not 0:15:56.920 --> 0:16:00.480 just responding to Dolls. I was also reading a uh 0:16:00.520 --> 0:16:03.920 An article by Justin Stearns, who I believe is a 0:16:04.360 --> 0:16:08.320 professor at n y U Abu Dhabi who specializes in 0:16:08.640 --> 0:16:12.760 uh Muslim history, and this one is called New Directions 0:16:12.760 --> 0:16:15.880 in the Study of Religious Responses to the Black Death, 0:16:16.480 --> 0:16:18.960 And I should stress that those sterns disagrees with a 0:16:18.960 --> 0:16:22.280 few of dolls as generalizations uh that that he makes. 0:16:22.520 --> 0:16:25.320 He says that overall Dolls's history is like a really 0:16:25.360 --> 0:16:28.160 important and excellent work. It is it. He does seem 0:16:28.200 --> 0:16:30.720 to be widely cited. Yeah, so it's not like the 0:16:30.760 --> 0:16:33.360 older one is like bad. It's just like he you know, 0:16:33.440 --> 0:16:42.360 maybe could have had more nuance in it. Got you now. 0:16:42.400 --> 0:16:44.640 I think in the previous episode we talked about how 0:16:44.680 --> 0:16:47.240 even if you put religious ideas aside for a moment, 0:16:47.920 --> 0:16:51.760 that Christian and Muslim societies into some degree tended to 0:16:52.360 --> 0:16:56.640 share the same dominant mechanical theories of the spread of plague. 0:16:56.640 --> 0:16:59.880 Where they had mechanical theories of the spread, which was 0:17:00.520 --> 0:17:03.920 the most common was that they were rooted in miasthma theory. Again, 0:17:03.960 --> 0:17:06.159 this is uh, the idea that there would be some 0:17:06.200 --> 0:17:08.800 form of bad air spreading the plague, and that this 0:17:08.840 --> 0:17:12.000 would have been derived from the common heritage of medical 0:17:12.040 --> 0:17:16.720 authorities like Hippocrates, Galen, and Avicenna. But then Dole says 0:17:16.840 --> 0:17:21.200 that European Christian and Muslim reactions were quite dissimilar in 0:17:21.359 --> 0:17:25.040 terms of their religious responses, and that this tells us 0:17:25.119 --> 0:17:30.080 something about the essential identity of each religious culture. So 0:17:30.440 --> 0:17:35.199 Doles has three major claims about the dominant views of 0:17:35.320 --> 0:17:38.520 Muslim religious authorities during the Black Death and and they 0:17:38.560 --> 0:17:40.840 go like this, and we can come back and analyze 0:17:40.920 --> 0:17:43.800 or maybe question these as we move along. So, first 0:17:43.840 --> 0:17:46.960 of all, Dole says that plague was viewed as a 0:17:47.119 --> 0:17:51.800 mercy from God and a martyrdom for the faithful Muslim. 0:17:51.840 --> 0:17:54.679 And so this this is an interesting variation to the 0:17:54.720 --> 0:17:59.000 extent that it's true, because by being a martyrdom, this 0:17:59.040 --> 0:18:02.960 would make dying from plague and a form of honorable 0:18:03.000 --> 0:18:06.480 death that will ensure that the martyr is delivered to paradise. 0:18:07.040 --> 0:18:10.520 And this stands in contrast to the widespread Christian view 0:18:10.600 --> 0:18:14.240 that plague was a divine punishment for sin uh though 0:18:14.320 --> 0:18:17.240 Doles mentioned some Muslim opinion that plague could be a 0:18:17.280 --> 0:18:21.840 punishment for sin in some cases, or say for nonbelievers. Alright, 0:18:21.880 --> 0:18:24.879 so the second tenant is quote a Muslim should not 0:18:25.200 --> 0:18:29.480 enter nor flee from a plague stricken land. And apparently 0:18:29.520 --> 0:18:33.000 this is a longstanding prophetic tradition in Islam. And to 0:18:33.119 --> 0:18:36.280 the extent that people did hold disbelief, it would obviously 0:18:36.440 --> 0:18:40.480 interfere with them protecting themselves by fleeing plague ridden towns. 0:18:41.200 --> 0:18:44.080 And then the third point is that quote, there was 0:18:44.119 --> 0:18:48.520 no contagion of plague, since disease came directly from God. 0:18:49.280 --> 0:18:52.760 And this is allegedly in contrast to Christian Europe, where 0:18:52.880 --> 0:18:56.680 although there was no germ theory of disease, you could 0:18:56.760 --> 0:19:00.600 see that there was some kind of rudimentary concept of contagion, 0:19:00.800 --> 0:19:05.399 the idea that somehow by being around plague you could 0:19:05.440 --> 0:19:09.320 get plague, though the mechanisms might have been obscure. So 0:19:09.359 --> 0:19:11.600 I think the difference here is that Doles is claiming 0:19:11.640 --> 0:19:14.720 that while in Europe there was broadly an idea that 0:19:14.760 --> 0:19:20.680 plague could be transmitted by some kind of brute physical causation, 0:19:20.760 --> 0:19:24.000 you could somehow just like get plague from the environment, 0:19:24.480 --> 0:19:27.560 in the Muslim world, plague was given to you directly 0:19:27.640 --> 0:19:32.080 by supernatural means by God, and thus didn't physically spread. 0:19:32.680 --> 0:19:36.040 And Doll's emphasizes these claims he makes by putting them 0:19:36.040 --> 0:19:39.320 in contrast to what he what he would claim about 0:19:39.400 --> 0:19:42.600 Christian Europe. So he writes, quote, the importance of these 0:19:42.600 --> 0:19:45.680 three principles to Muslim society was in what they did 0:19:45.760 --> 0:19:50.080 not affirm. They did not declare that plague was God's punishment, 0:19:50.240 --> 0:19:53.600 they did not encourage flight, and they did not support 0:19:53.600 --> 0:19:56.560 a belief in the contagious nature of plague, all of 0:19:56.600 --> 0:20:00.000 which were prevalent in Christian Europe. However, he does quality 0:20:00.040 --> 0:20:03.439 ify these. He also does not treat these as the 0:20:03.520 --> 0:20:06.760 universal blanket statements. He says that while these three religio 0:20:06.880 --> 0:20:09.560 legal tenants, or what he calls them, while they were 0:20:09.600 --> 0:20:13.399 generally held, it would be untrue and unreasonable to believe 0:20:13.400 --> 0:20:16.399 they were held universally, and there was some measure of 0:20:16.440 --> 0:20:20.040 scholarly debate about them. So as for the first principle, 0:20:20.240 --> 0:20:23.040 the idea that plague is a is a mercy and 0:20:23.080 --> 0:20:26.880 a martyrdom from God, there is some historical and literary 0:20:26.960 --> 0:20:30.199 evidence of people believing the opposite in Muslim societies, that 0:20:30.280 --> 0:20:32.880 in some cases it was viewed as a punishment for sin, 0:20:33.200 --> 0:20:36.720 like it was commonly in Christian Europe, rather than as 0:20:36.720 --> 0:20:39.520 a mercy. So just one example I came across. I 0:20:39.520 --> 0:20:42.679 was reading that paper by by Newcat Varlick, and she 0:20:42.840 --> 0:20:47.040 mentions a saying of a fifteenth century Ottoman scholar who 0:20:47.119 --> 0:20:51.000 attributes plague to adultery. So you know when adultery takes place, 0:20:51.119 --> 0:20:53.800 you know that that can only foster evil upon the world, 0:20:53.800 --> 0:20:56.760 and that evil becomes plague, which sounds kind of like 0:20:56.800 --> 0:20:58.600 some of the things that we were talking about in 0:20:58.600 --> 0:21:02.440 the last episode that were commonly believed in Europe. Now 0:21:02.480 --> 0:21:05.720 there might be some doubt about these three characterizations he makes, 0:21:05.760 --> 0:21:09.000 but first, I did just want to mention some consequences 0:21:09.040 --> 0:21:13.439 that Dolls believes follows from uh these three facts he 0:21:13.480 --> 0:21:16.840 believes to be true about the Muslim response to plague. 0:21:17.359 --> 0:21:21.240 One major difference is that Muslim societies do not really 0:21:21.280 --> 0:21:24.800 seem to record what he calls, quoting another source the 0:21:24.960 --> 0:21:32.000 quote striking manifestations of abnormal collective psychology, of dissociation of 0:21:32.040 --> 0:21:36.200 the group mind that were present in Christian Europe. Um. So, 0:21:36.480 --> 0:21:39.879 for example, he says that there's really no evidence that 0:21:40.240 --> 0:21:45.000 Muslim society has produced apocalyptic messianic movements in response to 0:21:45.080 --> 0:21:47.919 the Black Death as did Christian Europe. So think of 0:21:47.960 --> 0:21:50.920 the flagelence that we talked about last time, and he 0:21:50.960 --> 0:21:52.960 thinks that this may be in part due to a 0:21:53.040 --> 0:21:57.840 relative lack of theological precedent in Islamic tradition. Quote. Furthermore, 0:21:57.920 --> 0:22:00.280 the fact that there was no certainty that play was 0:22:00.320 --> 0:22:03.919 a divine punishment for sin, removed the impetus for a 0:22:03.960 --> 0:22:09.000 cohesive puritanical and revivalist popular movement. Yeah, because if you 0:22:09.040 --> 0:22:11.320 think back to what we discussed in the last episode, 0:22:11.320 --> 0:22:14.760 there was this sense that the system is failing, like, 0:22:15.160 --> 0:22:18.000 why are we still being punished by God for our sins? 0:22:18.040 --> 0:22:20.280 What more do we have to do? Perhaps we have 0:22:20.359 --> 0:22:22.520 to work outside the system, And it leads to these 0:22:22.600 --> 0:22:27.720 various heretical um threads such as the flagelence you know, 0:22:27.840 --> 0:22:30.840 becomes a movement, and yeah, you can see where of 0:22:31.560 --> 0:22:34.119 if there's a not a precedent for those kinds of 0:22:34.160 --> 0:22:37.199 movements and you you don't have as much of this 0:22:37.280 --> 0:22:42.639 emphasis of of play being directly caused by by personal 0:22:42.840 --> 0:22:46.239 or communal sin, uh, then there's there's less room for 0:22:46.280 --> 0:22:51.040 that to to to grow right now. There's another important 0:22:51.520 --> 0:22:56.320 difference that the Doll's argues. He says that minority communities 0:22:56.400 --> 0:23:01.240 in Muslim lands were not persecuted a reaction to the plague, 0:23:01.280 --> 0:23:03.800 certainly not to the extent that they were in Europe. 0:23:04.359 --> 0:23:07.639 For example, the way Jews were persecuted in communities throughout 0:23:07.720 --> 0:23:10.840 Christian Europe as a sort of a violent outburst in 0:23:10.920 --> 0:23:14.680 response to the plague and dolls. Thinks this may be 0:23:14.800 --> 0:23:18.000 in part derivative of his claim that Muslims did not 0:23:18.119 --> 0:23:22.119 generally believe in contagion, but rather believe that plague was 0:23:22.160 --> 0:23:25.320 sent directly from God. So the way that would work 0:23:25.359 --> 0:23:28.720 is if you can't really get the plague from a 0:23:28.800 --> 0:23:31.879 physical cause, like if if you know it's just God 0:23:31.960 --> 0:23:34.240 deciding whether or not you get plague, if you can 0:23:34.280 --> 0:23:37.159 only get it straight from the divine realm, then you 0:23:37.200 --> 0:23:41.440 couldn't really have these delusional conspiracy theories about Jews poisoning 0:23:41.480 --> 0:23:44.480 the wells and so forth. Now, now, speaking of the 0:23:44.480 --> 0:23:49.640 the the Jewish persecution during the Black Death, I had 0:23:49.920 --> 0:23:52.160 I want to throw in just one little bit here. 0:23:52.160 --> 0:23:53.800 I had some notes on this, but then we ended 0:23:53.880 --> 0:23:55.960 up not covering it. And then we heard from a 0:23:56.000 --> 0:23:59.720