Our understanding of the spread of the Black Death across Asia has for centuries been based on a misinterpretation of a medieval literary account. This revelation overturns established certainties about one of the deadliest episodes in human history.
Researchers have identified the origin of this misunderstanding in a 14th-century Arabic text written by the poet and historian Ibn al-Wardi. This work, a "maqāma," belongs to a literary genre characterized by stories featuring itinerant characters with often fictional adventures. Gradually, readers transformed this artistic creation into a historical account, thus establishing a distorted view of the epidemic's actual progression across continents.
Beliefs about the rapid spread of the Black Death in Asia come from an ancient Arabic literary account, not from historical facts.
Illustration image Pixabay The so-called "rapid transit" theory suggested that the responsible bacterium had traveled 3,100 miles (5,000 kilometers) in less than ten years from Central Asia to the shores of the Black Sea and the Mediterranean. This hypothesis, largely influenced by Ibn al-Wardi's account, depicted the plague as a relentless traveler successively devastating China, India, Persia before reaching the Middle East. New analyses show that this dramatic vision corresponds more to a literary allegory than to epidemiological reality.
The study conducted by Muhammed Omar and Nahyan Fancy demonstrates how this confusion spread through the centuries. 15th-century Arab historians and then their European counterparts gradually transformed this fiction into historical truth. Professor Fancy compares this situation to a spider's web where all the threads of myths about the Black Death converge on this single text, creating a fallacious narrative that has persisted to this day.
The tradition of maqāmas, an Arabic literary form invented in the 10th century, was very successful during the Mamluk period. These texts were designed to be read in their entirety in a single session, often blending reality and fiction. Several maqāmas dealing with the plague were composed during the 1348-1349 epidemic, offering valuable testimony about the psychological mechanisms deployed by populations to confront this unprecedented catastrophe.
These literary writings inform us less about the actual geographical progression of the disease than about human reactions to collective anxiety. They reveal how artistic creativity could constitute an adaptation strategy in the face of the scale of mortality, similar to phenomena observed during more recent health crises. This new perspective opens research avenues on the memory of past epidemics and their lasting impact on medieval societies.
The Black Death: a demographic catastrophe
The Black Death represents one of the most devastating pandemics in human history. Between 1347 and 1351, it is estimated to have caused the death of 30 to 50% of the European population, approximately 25 million people. This demographic carnage profoundly transformed the social and economic structures of the Middle Ages.
The disease was caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis, transmitted to humans by rodent fleas, mainly rats. Three main forms of plague existed: bubonic, septicemic, and pneumonic, the latter being particularly contagious and deadly. Symptoms included high fever, chills, and the appearance of characteristic buboes in the groin and armpits.
The social consequences were immense: collapse of agricultural systems, disruption of commercial exchanges, and religious upheavals. The massive mortality paradoxically improved the living conditions of survivors by creating a labor shortage, allowing peasants to negotiate better wages.
Recurrences of the plague marked European mentalities for nearly four centuries, until the last major epidemic in Marseille in 1720. This long coexistence with the disease profoundly influenced art, literature, and collective representations of death in Western culture.
Maqāmas: jewels of medieval Arabic literature
Maqāmas constitute a classical Arabic literary genre that reached its peak between the 10th and 14th centuries. These works are characterized by their narrative structure blending rhymed prose and versification, often centered on the adventures of a wandering hero with remarkable eloquence skills.
The genre was perfected by masters like Al-Hariri of Basra, whose maqāmas were studied in all madrasas of the Muslim world. Each narrative skillfully combines moral instruction, linguistic virtuosity, and social satire, reflecting the sophistication of medieval Arab-Islamic civilization.
Oral performance played a crucial role in the dissemination of maqāmas. Professional storytellers performed them in public squares, adapting their declamation to the present audience. This living tradition participated in the transmission of knowledge and popular education in medieval urban societies.
Beyond their artistic value, maqāmas offer a unique window into the daily life, moral concerns, and social tensions of their time. Their study allows us to understand how medieval societies conceived the relationship between fiction and reality, between entertainment and teaching.