![]() The scientific method had not yet been invented. Responses to the plague were informed by the dominant religions of West and East as well as the traditions and superstitions of the regions and presented as a narrative which explained the disease. ![]() From ports such as Marseilles and Valencia, it spread from city to city with every person who had had contact with anyone from the ships and there seemed no way to stop it. The Genoese fled the city by ship and so brought the plague to Europe. As his troops died of plague, Djanibek ordered their corpses catapulted over Caffa's walls, thereby spreading the disease to the defenders. 1342-1357 CE) was laying siege to the port city of Caffa (modern-day Feodosia in Crimea) which was held by the Italians of Genoa. It was around this time that the Mongol Khan Djanibek (r. The disease maintained this pattern in the East, seeming to disappear only to rise again, until it picked up momentum beginning in 1218 CE, further in 1322 CE, and was raging by 1346 CE. 588 CE), an eyewitness to the plague, notes that the people of Constantinople were aware of the plague for two years before it came to the city but made no provision against it, believing it was not their problem.Īfter Constantinople, the plague died down in the East only to appear again with the Djazirah Outbreak of 562 CE which killed 30,000 people in the city of Amida and even more when it returned in 599-600 CE. This outbreak, however, was simply the furthest westerly occurrence of a disease that had been stalking the people of the Near East for years before. The first recorded outbreak of bubonic plague is the Plague of Justinian (541-542 CE) which struck Constantinople in 541 CE and killed an estimated 50 million people. ![]() The plague originated in Central Asia and spread via the Silk Road and troop movements throughout the Near East. ![]()
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