Page 99 - مدارات ونقوش عدد 26_27ط

History When History Speaks .. and When Humans Read

Epidemic Stories

in the Writings of Novelists and Historians

Orbits & Inscriptions
(exclusive)*
With the increasing talk
about the Corona epidemic,
the memory returns to liter-
ary works and historical books
dealing with the epidemics and
pandemics that struck man-
kind, some of which date back
thousands of years, and some
caused the annihilation of civili-
zations, such as the plague that
swept the Greek civilization and
Egypt later, as well as smallpox,
cholera and Spanish influenza,
all the way to Corona, which has
become a source of terror for
humankind. It is the largest bi-
ological calamity scientists are
perplexed about.

Collapse of States donment of entire villages, and the collapse of agriculture
The plague may be one of the main reasons for the and other industries such as silk and clothing. “Cairo was
collapse of the rule of the Mamluks, as its consequences classified as the largest or the second largest city in the
were not limited to claiming the lives world with a population of half a million people, it lost two
in Egypt and the Levant from 1347 hundred thousand of its population between 1347 and
until the Ottoman invasion in 1517. 1349”, adds Watts.
But the most adverse repercussions The plague was not confined to the Islamic Orient for
were the famines, devastation and it came from Western Europe. Watts recounts how the epi-
economic meltdown that followed demic spread from the Black Sea ports in 1347 when mice
each epidemic. and fleas boarded ships bound for Genoa and Venice in
The American historian Sheldon Italy. Because of the thriving trade movement in the Med-
Watts states in his book History and iterranean basin, ships soon reached the coasts and cities
Epidemics that the death of thousands of workers and of Egypt, with the “Black Death” prevailing in the southern
peasants of the plague in Mamluk Egypt led to the aban- and northern Mediterranean and Western Europe.

14 Issue No. (26 - 27) April - May ( 2020)