Description
Book SynopsisThe preeminent meditation on plagues and pandemics from the Islamic world, now in English for the first time
A Penguin ClassicSix hundred years ago, the author of this landmark work of history and religious thought—an esteemed judge, poet, and scholar in Cairo—survived the bubonic plague, which took the lives of three of his children, not to mention tens of millions of others throughout the medieval world. Holding up an eerie mirror to our own time, he reflects on the origins of plagues—from those of the Prophet Muhammad’s era to the Black Death of his own—and what it means that such catastrophes could have been willed by God, while also chronicling the fear, isolation, scapegoating, economic tumult, political failures, and crises of faith that he lived through. But in considering the meaning of suffering and mass death, he also offers a message of radical hope. Weaving together accounts of evil jinn, religious stories, medical manual
Trade Review“This is the first English-language edition of his work, deservedly bringing it to a wide new audience. . . . Having lost three of his daughters to the Black Death, [Ibn Hajar] reflects with empathy and grief on examples of plagues from the time of the Prophet Muhammad to his own. . . . At a time when many ruins of the coronavirus pandemic are yet to be rebuilt,
Merits of the Plague helps us to place our experience of the disease in a longer arc of history.” —
The Times Literary Supplement“Remarkable . . . A landmark work of history and religious thought . . . Surprisingly modern and has a lot to say to us in the era of coronavirus.” —
History Unplugged Podcast“A valuable addition to our understanding of the pandemic and how people reacted to it . . . This book offers a much-needed perspective from the Islamic world.” —
Medievalists.net“A unique, non-Western medieval perspective on the Black Death and pandemics in general.” —
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