Infectious Ideas: Contagion in Premodern Islamic and Christian Thought in the Western Mediterranean

302 Pages·2011·2.492 MB·English

by  Justin K. Stearns

Infectious Ideas
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Infectious Ideas
Contagion in Premodern Islamic and Christian Thought
in the Western Mediterranean
Justin K. Stearns
The Johns Hopkins University Press
Baltimore
This book has been brought to publication with the generous support of the
Program for Cultural Cooperation between Spain’s Ministry of Culture and
United States Universities.
© 2011 The Johns Hopkins University Press
All rights reserved. Published 2011
Printed in the United States of America on acid- free paper
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The Johns Hopkins University Press
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Library of Congress Cataloging- in-Publication Data
Stearns, Justin K., 1974–
Infectious ideas : contagion in premodern Islamic and Christian thought in the
Western Mediterranean / Justin K. Stearns.
p. ; cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN- 13: 978-0-8018-9873-0 (hardcover : alk. paper)
ISBN- 10: 0-8018-9873-0 (hardcover : alk. paper)
1. Diseases—Causes and theories of causation—History—To 1500. 2. Medi-
cine, Medieval—Western Mediterranean. 3. Epidemiology—History—To 1500.
4. Medicine—Religious aspects—Islam—History—To 1500. 5. Medicine—Reli-
gious aspects—Christianity—History—To 1500. I. Title.
[DNLM: 1. Medicine in Literature—Africa, Northern. 2. Medicine in Literature—
Portugal. 3. Medicine in Literature—Spain. 4. Christianity—history—Africa,
Northern. 5. Christianity—history—Portugal. 6. Christianity—history—Spain.
7. Communicable Diseases—Africa, Northern. 8. Com municable Diseases—
Portugal. 9. Communicable Diseases—Spain. 10. Cross- Cultural Comparison—
Africa, Northern. 11. Cross- Cultural Comparison—Portugal. 12. Cross- Cultural
Comparison—Spain. 13. Islam—history—Africa, Northern. 14. Islam—history—
Portugal. 15. Islam—history—Spain. 16. Leprosy—history—Africa, Northern.
17. Leprosy—history—Portugal. 18. Leprosy—history—Spain. 19. Plague—
history—Africa, Northern. 20. Plague—history—Portugal. 21. Plague—history—
Spain. WZ 330 S7995i 2011]
RB152.S74 2011
362.196(cid:2)9—dc22 2010019679
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including recycled text paper that is composed of at least 30 percent post- consumer
waste, whenever possible. All of our book papers are acid- free, and our jackets and
covers are printed on paper with recycled content.
To Mataio
for everything you have given us
and
for everything that will come
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Contents
Preface ix
Acknowledgments xv
Chronological List of Relevant Muslim and Christian Scholars
Who Wrote on Contagion in the Premodern Period xvii
Introduction. Contagion and Causality in the Study of Premodern Muslim
and Christian Societies 1
Chapter 1. Contagion in the Commentaries on Prophetic Tradition 13
Chapter 2. Contagion as Metaphor in Iberian Christian Scholarship 37
Chapter 3. Contagion Contested: Greek Medical Thought, Prophetic Medicine,
and the First Plague Treatises 67
Chapter 4. Situating Scholastic Contagion between Miasma
and the Evil Eye 91
Chapter 5. Contagion between Islamic Law and Theology 106
Chapter 6. Contagion Revisited: Early Modern Maghribi Plague Treatises 140
Conclusion. Reframing Muslim and Christian Views on Contagion 160
Appendix A. Contagion in the Christian Exegetical Tradition 169
Appendix B. The Presence of Ashʿarism in the Maghrib 175
Notes 187
Bibliography 245
Index 267
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Preface
Disease, and especially epidemic disease, has played an infl uential or even central
role in human history. Not too long ago, when the focus of historians was largely
political, and disease made at best an anecdotal appearance in standard historical
narratives, such a statement would have needed justifi cation. But in the past half
century, historians and scholars have argued convincingly that disease has been
a factor in nearly every aspect of the human experience.1 Few would now dis-
pute that epidemic disease infl uenced (and continues to infl uence) political, social,
and economic developments; a classic example is the role played by smallpox in
the Spanish conquest of the New World. How has humankind responded to this
infl uence? What were the cultural and intellectual responses to epidemics? How
have societies made sense of these terrible and traumatic natural disasters that
they could neither fully control nor understand? This book examines one aspect
of the human experience of epidemics, the transmission of disease—commonly
known as contagion—in the context of Christian and Muslim societies in Iberia
and North Africa. Much of the attention is focused on the example of the Black
Death of the fourteenth century, but in order to fully contextualize the variety and
richness of the meanings given to the concept of contagion, the book considers
examples from the ninth to the nineteenth centuries.
Epidemic disease disrupts societies and threatens the established social and
ethical order. As is true of both the plague and leprosy, the two diseases that fi g-
ure most prominently in this work, epidemics commonly arouse fear, disgust,
helplessness, and incomprehension. How and why epidemics occur have always
been closely associated if not interwoven questions, and any discussion of con-
tagion in medieval Iberia involves an at least implicit discussion of how Chris-
tians and Muslims responded to these epidemics themselves. Yet the focus here
is on the many signifi cances of contagion itself, and specifi cally on how Chris-
tian and Muslim scholars presented understandings of contagion that drew pro-
ductively and creatively on medical knowledge, empirical observation, religious
sources, and previous scholarship. This is a comparative study, in that the worlds
of Christian and Muslim scholarship here examined were largely distinct, though
they both drew on Greek sources and Abrahamic scriptures. Simultaneously, it
strives to avoid the comparativist tendency to reduce a given religion, culture, or