Protecting the public from epidemic disease

For each record, name who made the decision and who had to follow it. Then ask which measures protect only the people who follow them and which protect others as well.

Read the report as the Muwatta record gives it, not as we would explain it. Malik transmits, through a chain the record names, from Ibn Abbas, that Umar ibn al-Khattab (may God be pleased with him) set out for Syria, and when he reached Sargh the military commanders, Abu Ubayda ibn al-Jarrah (may God be pleased with him) and his companions, met him and told him that the plague had broken out in Syria ². Umar consulted the first emigrants, who disagreed; then the Ansar, who disagreed; then the elders of Quraysh among the emigrants of the conquest, who agreed to return ². Umar called out to people: I am setting off in the morning on the back of my mount, so set off in the morning. Abu Ubayda said: are you fleeing from the decree of God? Umar said: we flee from one decree of God to another. Then Abd al-Rahman ibn Awf (may God be pleased with him) came and said: I have knowledge of this; I heard the Messenger of God ﷺ say: if you hear of it in a land, do not enter it; if it breaks out in a land where you are, do not leave it to flee from it. Umar praised God and went away ².

What was the first hospital in Islam? The sources agree that hospitals were known before Islam, and differ over the first one in Islam. Al-Maqrizi says the first to build a maristan in Islam was al-Walid ibn Abd al-Malik, in 88 AH ³. Al-Mada'ini, as quoted by Ibn Kathir, and al-Suyuti record al-Walid's organised provision for lepers, the disabled and the blind, but mention neither a building nor physicians ^4 5. The TDV encyclopaedia makes Rufayda's tent the first bimaristan, reports al-Maqrizi and others, and does not decide between them ⁶. The disagreement is over what "first" means: the first place where the wounded were treated, or the first permanent house for the sick with physicians paid by the state ⁶.

It is easy to take al-Walid's maristan for the beginning of the idea of a hospital. The record says the hospital was not new to the world: al-Maqrizi himself opens his chapter on maristans with what came before Islam, quoting Abu Sa'id Mansur ibn Isa that Hippocrates was the first to invent the maristan, and Ibrahim ibn Wasif Shah that King Manaqiyush was the first to make bimaristans ³. The TDV encyclopaedia calls Manaqiyush a mythological king ⁶. Al-Walid was not a physician, and he did not invent the idea of a hospital, which Persia and Byzantium had before him; his part is that of the one who ordered the building and paid for it ³.

The report of al-Walid's maristan rests on al-Maqrizi's Khitat: he placed physicians in it on paid allowances and ordered the lepers confined so that they would not go out ³. Al-Maqrizi names neither the city where it was built nor the physicians who worked in it ³. Al-Mada'ini keeps the other side of the report: al-Walid gave to the lepers and told them, "Do not beg from people," and gave every person unable to walk a servant and every blind person a guide ⁴. No known trace of the house survives, and the sources read do not name its site ³. The Umar passage is given in its own record with its chain and names, and the museum does not explain it. Ask which of these witnesses stands closer to the event, and which stands further from it.

In the Muwatta report, Umar consulted three groups: the first emigrants disagreed, the Ansar disagreed, and the elders of Quraysh among the emigrants of the conquest agreed to return; then Umar called out to people that he was setting off in the morning; then Abd al-Rahman ibn Awf came with what he had heard ². Take a position on what the report presents as the ground of Umar's decision, the consultation or Abd al-Rahman's report, and answer the strongest objection to it: does the report not end with Umar praising God and going away after Abd al-Rahman spoke?

• Muwatta 2611: the report with its chain, and the names of those it mentions.
• The epidemic: the saying reported from the Prophet about a land where it falls.
• Al-Walid's maristan: al-Maqrizi's report, the sources that differ, and the dispute over who was first.
• Umar ibn al-Khattab: the record of the one who took the decision in the Muwatta report.