Description
Book SynopsisBased on Stearns's analysis of Muslim and Christian legal, theological, historical, and medical texts in Arabic, Medieval Castilian, and Latin, Infectious Ideas is the first book to offer a comparative discussion of concepts of contagion in the premodern Mediterranean world.
Trade ReviewA welcome addition to the growing literature on plague-and medical thought-in the premodern Islamic world. Stearns's translations add new voices to those already known, and approach known figures with subtlety and nuance, challenging or at least refining the conclusions of the established scholarship... Stearns has provided future students commanding the requisite skills and depth of vision both a model and a solid target. -- Joseph P. Byrne American Historical Review Provides readers not only with a fascinating, beautifully researched account of contagion and plague in the premodern Western Mediterranean, but also with a series of thought-provoking new approaches to religious exegesis, legal interpretation, and literary production, and a set of methodological models that should serve scholars in the fields far beyond the realm of fourteenth- and fifteenth-century studies of illness and health in the Maghrib. The book is a fascinating read. -- Ruth A. Miller Journal of the American Oriental Society
Table of ContentsPreface
Acknowledgments
Chronological List of Relevant Muslim and Christian Scholars Who Wrote on Contagion in the Premodern Period
Introduction: Contagion and Causality in the Study of Premodern Muslim and Christian Societies
1. Contagion in the Commentaries on Prophetic Tradition
2. Contagion as Metaphor in Iberian Christian Scholarship
3. Contagion Contested: Greek Medical Thought, Prophetic Medicine, and the First Plague Treatises
4. Situating Scholastic Contagion between Miasmaand the Evil Eye
5. Contagion between Islamic Law and Theology
6. Contagion Revisited: Early Modern Maghribi Plague Treatises
Conclusion: Reframing Muslim and Christian Views on Contagion
Appendix A: Contagion in the Christian Exegetical Tradition
Appendix B: The Presence of Ash'arism in the Maghrib
Notes
Bibligraphy
Index
