Epidemics in the histories

This lesson asks you to explain how epidemics have affected humanity through history. The museum offers three epidemics as the histories report them, with the sources' own figures and their limits. The great pandemics of other regions, and what caused and ended them, are for your class to bring. ¹

For each epidemic, write what the source says changed: who died, who left, what was closed or disrupted. Mark which statements are numbers and which are accounts of people.

Read what Ibn al-Athir reports in the record of the plague of Amwas. The plague of Amwas in Syria in 18 AH took the flower of the conquest's commanders: Abu Ubayda ibn al-Jarrah (may God be pleased with him), the commander of the people; Mu'adh ibn Jabal; Yazid ibn Abi Sufyan (may God be pleased with him); al-Harith ibn Hisham (may God be pleased with him); and Suhayl ibn Amr ². Umar wrote to Abu Ubayda summoning him on an urgent matter, intending to bring him out of the epidemic. Abu Ubayda understood Umar's purpose and wrote back: "I am among the soldiers of the Muslims, and I have no desire to be apart from them, so release me from your order." When Umar read the letter he wept. He was asked, "Has Abu Ubayda died?" He said, "No, but it is as if it had already happened." ² This is a historian's account of a letter and its answer, given as the record gives it; it does not by itself show what happened during the epidemic.

Al-Baladhuri, in the same record, reports that Abu Ubayda appointed a successor when he was dying, and then gives a disagreement: it was said that he appointed Iyad ibn Ghanm al-Fihri; it is also said that he appointed Amr ibn al-As (may God be pleased with him), and Amr then appointed his son ³. A historian therefore has two statements about one event, each attributed as al-Baladhuri gives it. The record does not choose between them and does not add a third from its own hand.

Al-Baladhuri, in Futuh al-Buldan, reports that the plague of Amwas was in 18 AH and that a number of Muslims died in it, and among them he names Abu Ubayda and Mu'adh ibn Jabal ³. Khalifa ibn Khayyat, following Ibn Ishaq, records the plague among the events of the same year and names Yazid ibn Abi Sufyan, Shurahbil ibn Hasana (may God be pleased with him) and al-Harith ibn Hisham ibn al-Mughira as well ⁴. Ibn al-Athir names Abu Ubayda, Mu'adh, Yazid, al-Harith and Suhayl ibn Amr ². The lists of the dead are not the same, and the record does not unify them. In the smallpox record the figures come with a hedge: it was said that forty thousand were buried in Isfahan within a few days, and that seventy thousand died in Baghdad in Dhu al-Hijja 425; these are the figures the sources give ⁵. A historian can compare the accounts and note what each says, but cannot recover a count of the dead from them.

The record of the smallpox years says that four thousand boys died of smallpox in Mosul, and that it was said forty thousand were buried in Isfahan within a few days and seventy thousand died in Baghdad in Dhu al-Hijja 425 ⁵. The record of Amwas gives three different lists of the dead from three historians. Choose which kind you would use to estimate the size of an epidemic: a number given with "it was said", or a list of names given by one named historian. Give your reason, then answer the strongest objection to your choice: are not the reports of all early chroniclers equally unreliable?

• The plague of Amwas: the accounts of al-Baladhuri, Khalifa ibn Khayyat and Ibn al-Athir, and who they say died.
• The smallpox years, 422 to 425 AH: year by year, with the figures the sources give.
• The death of Ibn Khaldun's parents in the Black Death: what Britannica says of Tunis in 1349.
• Abu Ubayda ibn al-Jarrah: the record of the commander at the centre of Ibn al-Athir's account.

Read the record on the smallpox years and make a year-by-year table of what the source reports for 422, 423, 424 and 425.