Plague and Contagion in the Islamic Mediterranean

Over the last decade or two, the field of Middle Eastern and Islamic studies has witnessed the convergence of new perspectives on the history of epidemic diseases. A growing body of scholarship enables us to explore connections between Middle Eastern studies and the histories of medicine and health. This study serves as testimony that the field has reached a certain level of maturity. Contributors to the volume tackle various questions of historiography and sources, test new interdisciplinary methodologies, and ask new questions while revisiting older ones. Essays in the volume discuss diseases that affected human and non-human populations in areas stretching from the Red Sea and Egypt to Anatolia, the Balkans, and the Black Sea, in the early modern and modern eras. The volume contributes to Ottoman studies, the history of medicine, Mediterranean and European history, as well as global studies on the role of epidemics in history.