Black Death in the Middle East

In the mid-14th century, the Middle East was mainly composed by the Mamluk Sultanate, which composed present day Egypt, Palestine, Lebanon and Syria, having the Jalayirid Sultanate (present day Iraq and Iran) in the East, and the Sultanate of Tunis (Tunisia) and Marinid Sultanate (Morocco) in North Africa to the West.

Since the outbreak of the Black Death at the Crimea, the plague, according to traditional history, had reached the Italian Peninsula and Europe by a plague ship to Sicily in 1347.[1]

In the autumn of 1347, a ship carrying the plague came to Alexandria in Egypt, from which it spread over Northern Egypt during the spring of 1348, reaching its peak between October 1348 and January 1349.[1] The plague resulted in widespread panic, in which the peasantry fled to the cities to escape the plague, while in parallel the city people fled to the country side, which created chaos and a collapse of public order.

In September 1348 the plague reached Cairo, which at this time was the biggest city in the Middle East and the Mediterranean world, as well as bigger than any city in Europe. When the plague reached Cairo, the Mamluk sultan An-Nasir Hasan fled the city and stayed in his residence Siryaqus outside of the city between the 25 September and 22 December, when the Black Death was present in Cairo.[1] The Black Death in Cairo resulted in the death of 200,000 people, which were a third of the population of the city, and resulted in several quarters of the city becoming depopulated quarters of empty ruins during the following century.[1]

In early 1349, the plague reached South Egypt, where the population in the region of Asuyt changed from 6,000 taxpayers before the plague to 116 after.[1] It is noted however, that a lot of the peasantry of the South Egypt fled in to the cities during the Black Death, and refused to return to work on the estates of the landlords when it was over.[1]

In April–May 1348, the Black Death migrated from the Northern Egypt to the city of Gaza in Palestine, where the population fled to the countryside, after which their homes were pillaged by criminals, who themselves died, while the peasants outside of the city reportedly fell down dead in their fields during their plowing.[1]

In the Summer of 1348, the Black Death had reached Damascus in Syria. In Damascus, processions of prayer as well as fasting were organized, and both Muslims, Christians and the Samaritans participated in public praying processions to appeal to God to prevent the plague.[1] The number of death soon reached so many thousands that funerals could, for a long time period, no longer be arranged. Bodies were stacked in gardens and on the street, and on 31 October 1348, ibn Abi Hajalah noted that 263 bodies were stacked in the Umayyad Mosque.[1] When the Black Death reached Antakya, a great deal of the population fled from the city, but reportedly, their horses returned to the city without their owners, who were later found dead of the plague on the road from the city.[1]

The Black Death was described by Ibn Battuta, who was in Aleppo in June 1348 when he was informed that the plague had reached Gaza, and travelled there via Homs, to which the plague had reached at the time, and arrived in Jerusalem, where the plague had already passed when he arrived, having killed almost all of the people with whom he had been acquainted with during his last visit.[1]

In April 1348, Sultan Abu al-Hasan Ali ibn Othman of the Marinid Sultanate of Morocco, was defeated by the Arab tribes near Kairouan and retreated toward Tunis; and because the Black Death is noted to be present in Tunis in June 1348, and broke out in Fez in Morocco when the Marinid army returned there from Tunis, it is believed to have moved with the army.[1]