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oa Between Religion and Science. The Debate on the Concept of Contagion in the Medieval Islamic World and its Western Parallels

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Abstract

The notion of contagion was looked upon with suspicion in the Arabic medical tradition. Medieval Islamic theologians generally ascribed epidemics to the will of God, denied contagion, and believed that an epidemic disease was to be accepted as a fatality, or even a blessing for the believer, as dying of plague could be regarded as a form of martyrdom that granted direct access to paradise. By contrast, in the works of two fourteenth-century Arab Andalusian intellectuals, Ibn Ḫātima, d. 1369 ., and Ibn al-Ḫaṭīb, 1313–1374, we find clear clinical evidence of the contagious nature of the fourteenth-century plague outbreak. The paper explores the contribution Ibn Ḫātima and Ibn al-Ḫaṭīb gave to the concept of contagion, understood as disease transmission through direct contact or by proximity.

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Between Religion and Science. The Debate on the Concept of Contagion in the Medieval Islamic World and its Western Parallels
https://doi.org/10.1484/M.STPH-EB.5.136406
/content/books/10.1484/M.STPH-EB.5.136406
/content/books/10.1484/M.STPH-EB.5.136406

References

  1. Bibliography
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  5. ***
    Aberth, John, The Black Death. The Great Mortality of 1348–1350: A Brief History with Documents (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005).
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  29. Nielsen, Donald A., ‘Pericles and the Plague: Civil Religion, Anomie, and Injustice in Thucydides’, Sociology of Religion, 57 (1996), pp. 397–407.
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  30. Nutton, Vivian, ‘The Seeds of Disease: An Explanation of Contagion and Infection from the Greeks to the Renaissance’, Medical History, 27 (1983), pp. 1–34.
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  31. Ober, William B., and Alloush, Nabil, ‘The Plague at Granada, 1348–1349: Ibn al-Khatib and Ideas of Contagion’, Bulletin of the New York Academy of Medicine, 58 (1982), pp. 418–24.
     [Google Scholar]
  32. Oikonomopoulou, Katerina, ‘The Problemata’s Medical Books: Structural and Methodological Aspects’, in The Aristotelian Problemata Physica: Philosophical and Scientific Investigations, ed. by Robert Mayhew, (Leiden: Brill, 2015), pp. 61–78.
  33. Orwin, Clifford, ‘Thucydides on the Dissolution of Society’, Journal of Politics, 50 (1988), pp. 831–47.
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  34. Savage-Smith, Emilie, ‘Médecine’, in Histoire des sciences arabes, 3. Technologie, alchimie et sciences de la vie, ed. by Roshdi Rashed (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1997) pp. 155–212.
  35. Seidel, Ernst, ‘Die Lehre von der Kontagion bei den Arabern’, Archiv für Geschichte der Medizin, 6 (1912), pp. 81–93.
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  36. Testa, Giuseppe, La peste antonina. Storia della prima pandemia dalla Cina alla Roma imperiale (Roma: Salerno Editrice, 2021).
  37. Walzer, Richard, Greek into Arabic: Essays on Islamic Philosophy (Oxford: Bruno Cassirer, 1962).
  38. Weisser, Ursula, Zeugung, Vererbung und pränatale Entwicklung in der Medizin des arabisch-islamischen Mittelalters (Erlangen: Lüling, 1983).

References

  1. Bibliography
    Boccaccio, Giovanni, Il Decameron, ed. by Carlo Salinari (Roma-Bari: Laterza, 1986).
  2. Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya, La Médecine du Prophète Muḥammad (Paris: Les Éditions Albouraq, 2021).
  3. Procopius, The History of the Wars, Books 1 and 2, trans. by Henry Bronson Dewing (London–New York: William Heinemman–The Macmillan Co., 1914).
  4. Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War, ed. and trans. by Martin Hammond and Peter John Rhodes (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009).
  5. ***
    Aberth, John, The Black Death. The Great Mortality of 1348–1350: A Brief History with Documents (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005).
  6. Aberth, John, Doctoring the Black Death: Medieval Europe’s Medical Response to Plague (Lanham–Boulder–New York–London: Roman and Littlefield, 2021).
  7. Allen, Pauline, ‘The “Justinianic” Plague’, Byzantion, 49 (1979), pp. 5–20.
     [Google Scholar]
  8. Boudon-Millot, Véronique, Galeno di Pergamo. Un medico greco a Roma, trans. by Maria Luisa Garofalo (Roma: Carocci, 2020) (orig. ed. Galien de Pergame, un médicin grec à Rome [Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 2012]).
  9. Campbell, Anna Montgomery, The Black Death and Men of Learning (New York: Columbia University Press, 1931).
  10. Conrad, Lawrence I., ‘Tāʿūn and Wabāʾ Conceptions of Plague and Pestilence in Early Islam’, Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient, 25 (1982), pp. 268–307.
     [Google Scholar]
  11. Craik, Elizabeth M., ‘Thucydides on the Plague: Physiology of Flux and Fixation’, Classical Quarterly, 51 (2001), pp. 102–8.
     [Google Scholar]
  12. Craik, Elizabeth M., The ‘Hippocratic’ Corpus. Content and Context (London: Routledge, 2014).
  13. D’Ancona, Cristina, La casa della sapienza. La trasmissione della metafisica greca e la formazione della filosofia araba (Bologna: Guerini e associati, 2005).
  14. del Moral, Celia, and Velásquez Basanta, Fernando, Ibn al-Jaṭīb y su tiempo (Granada: Editorial Universidad de Granada, 2012).
  15. Djebbar, Ahmed, Storia della scienza araba. Il patrimonio intellettuale dell’Islam, trans. by Massimo Campanini (Milano: Raffaello Cortina, 2002) (orig. ed. Une histoire de la science arabe : Introduction à la connaissance du patrimoine scientifique des pays d’Islam. Entretiens avec Jean Rosmorduc [Paris: Le Seuil, 2001]).
  16. Dols, Michael Walters, The Black Death in the Middle East (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1977).
  17. Endress, Gerhard, ‘Die wissenschaftliche Literatur’, in Grundriß der arabischen Philologie. Vol. 2: Literaturwissenschaft, ed. by Helmut Gätje (Wiesbaden: Ludwig Reichert, 1987), pp. 400–506.
  18. Endress, Gerhard, ‘Die wissenschaftliche Literatur’, in Grundriß der arabischen Philologie. Vol. 3: Supplement, ed. by Wolfdietrich Fischer (Wiesbaden: Ludwig Reichert, 1992), pp. 3–152.
  19. Filoramo, Giovanni and Rosa Maria Parriniello, Guarire dal contagio. Riti e parole delle grandi religioni (Milano: Jaca Book, 2020).
  20. Goodman, Lenn E., Avicenna (London–New York: Routledge, 1992).
  21. Green, Monica H. (ed.), Pandemic Disease in the Medieval World: Rethinking the Black Death (Kalamazoo–Bradford: ARC Medieval Press, 2015).
  22. Gutas, Dimitri, Greek Thought, Arabic Culture: The Graeco-Arabic Translation Movement in Baghdad and Early Abbasid Society (2nd-4th/8th-10th Centuries) (London–New York: Routledge, 1998).
  23. Holladay, A. James, and Poole, J.C.F., ‘Thucydides and the Plague of Athens’, Classical Quarterly, 29 (1979), pp. 282–300.
     [Google Scholar]
  24. Hopley, Russell, ‘Contagion In Islamic Lands: Responses from Medieval Andalusia and North Africa’, Journal for Early Modern Cultural Studies, 10 (2010), pp. 45–64.
     [Google Scholar]
  25. Little, Lester K. (ed.), Plague and the End of Antiquity: The Pandemic of 541–750 (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2006).
  26. Lizzini, Olga, Avicenna (Roma: Carocci, 2012).
  27. Marafioti, Martin, ‘Post-Decameron Plague Treatises and the Boccacian Innovation of Narrative Prophylaxis’, Annali d’Italianistica 23, Literature & Science, (2005), pp. 69–87.
  28. Morgan, Thomas E., ‘Plague or Poetry? Thucydides on the Epidemic at Athens’, Transactions of the American Philological Association, 124 (1994), pp. 197–209.
     [Google Scholar]
  29. Nielsen, Donald A., ‘Pericles and the Plague: Civil Religion, Anomie, and Injustice in Thucydides’, Sociology of Religion, 57 (1996), pp. 397–407.
     [Google Scholar]
  30. Nutton, Vivian, ‘The Seeds of Disease: An Explanation of Contagion and Infection from the Greeks to the Renaissance’, Medical History, 27 (1983), pp. 1–34.
     [Google Scholar]
  31. Ober, William B., and Alloush, Nabil, ‘The Plague at Granada, 1348–1349: Ibn al-Khatib and Ideas of Contagion’, Bulletin of the New York Academy of Medicine, 58 (1982), pp. 418–24.
     [Google Scholar]
  32. Oikonomopoulou, Katerina, ‘The Problemata’s Medical Books: Structural and Methodological Aspects’, in The Aristotelian Problemata Physica: Philosophical and Scientific Investigations, ed. by Robert Mayhew, (Leiden: Brill, 2015), pp. 61–78.
  33. Orwin, Clifford, ‘Thucydides on the Dissolution of Society’, Journal of Politics, 50 (1988), pp. 831–47.
     [Google Scholar]
  34. Savage-Smith, Emilie, ‘Médecine’, in Histoire des sciences arabes, 3. Technologie, alchimie et sciences de la vie, ed. by Roshdi Rashed (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1997) pp. 155–212.
  35. Seidel, Ernst, ‘Die Lehre von der Kontagion bei den Arabern’, Archiv für Geschichte der Medizin, 6 (1912), pp. 81–93.
     [Google Scholar]
  36. Testa, Giuseppe, La peste antonina. Storia della prima pandemia dalla Cina alla Roma imperiale (Roma: Salerno Editrice, 2021).
  37. Walzer, Richard, Greek into Arabic: Essays on Islamic Philosophy (Oxford: Bruno Cassirer, 1962).
  38. Weisser, Ursula, Zeugung, Vererbung und pränatale Entwicklung in der Medizin des arabisch-islamischen Mittelalters (Erlangen: Lüling, 1983).

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