Cited by 146Ottoman and Turkish StudiesOttoman Empire History and SocietyHistorical Turkish Studies

Plague and Empire in the Early Modern Mediterranean World: The Ottoman Experience, 1347–1600

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Varlik, Nükhet·2015·Cambridge University Press eBooks

Abstract

This is the first systematic scholarly study of the Ottoman experience of plague during the Black Death pandemic and the centuries that followed. Using a wealth of archival and narrative sources, including medical treatises, hagiographies and travellers' accounts, as well as recent scientific research, Nükhet Varlik demonstrates how plague interacted with the environmental, social, and political structures of the Ottoman Empire from the late medieval through the early modern era. The book argues that the empire's growth transformed the epidemiological patterns of plague by bringing diverse ecological zones into interaction and by intensifying the mobilities of exchange among both human and non-human agents. Varlik maintains that persistent plagues elicited new forms of cultural imagination and expression, as well as a new body of knowledge about the disease. In turn, this new consciousness sharpened the Ottoman administrative response to the plague, while contributing to the makings of an early modern state.

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  • The arrival of the Crusaders prompted the resacralization of greater Syria.

    “The arrival of the Crusaders -who built at least four hundred chapels and churches in the Levant over the course of their two-hundred-year presence -prompted the resacralization of greater Syria.”

    From In an Ottoman Holy Land: The Hajj and the Road from Damascus, 1500–1800 (2020) · cites this paper as [21]

    The passages from “Humans” discuss Ottoman pilgrimage routes, population movements, and plague, not the Crusaders’ arrival or the resacralization of greater Syria (page unavailable). Searches for “resacralization of greater Syria,” “Crusaders,” and churches in the Levant found no passage addressing the claim. (LLM, conf=0.76)

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Research works printed but not linked: 27

  1. Philip L. Armitage, "Unwelcome Companions: Ancient Rats Reviewed," Antiquity 68 (June 1994): 231-40. Also, for possible scenarios of the migration patterns of commensal black rats, see Anton Ervynck, "Sedentism or Urbanism? On the Origin of the Commensal Black Rat (Rattus rattus)," in Bones and the Man: Studies in Honour of Don Brothwell, ed. Keith Dobney and Terry Patrick O'Connor, 95-109 (Oxford: Oxbow, 2002).
  2. Aplin et al., "Multiple Geographic Origins of Commensalism and Complex Dispersal His- tory of Black Rats," PLoS One 6, no. 11 (2011): e26357.
  3. Lise Ruffino and Eric Vidal, "Early Colonization of Mediterranean Islands by Rattus rattus: A Review of Zooarcheological Data," Biological Invasions 12 (2010): 2389-94;
  4. Robert Sallares, "Ecology, Evolution, and Epidemiology of Plague," in Plague and the End of Antiquity: The Pandemic of 541-750, ed. Lester Little (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 268. Also see Hans Zinsser's classic book for a brief account of rats in the Near East during antiquity: Rats, Lice, and History (New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction, 87 Ahmed Tas ¸k öprizade, Risalah al-shifaʾ li-adwaʾ al-wabaʾ ([Cairo]: al-Matbaʿah al- Wahbiyah, 1875);
  5. S üheyl Ünver, "T ürkiye'de veba tarihc ¸esi üzerine," Tedavi Klini gi ve Laboratuvarı Mecmuası 5 (1935): 70-71.
  6. Zdenek Hub álek, "An Annotated Checklist of Pathogenic Microorganisms Associated with Migratory Birds," Journal of Wildlife Diseases 40, no. 4 (2004): 639-59.
  7. Mertyn Malkin- son et al., "Introduction of West Nile Virus in the Middle East by Migrating White Storks," Emerging Infectious Diseases 8, no. 4 (2002): 392-97.
  8. Lise Heier et al., "Emergence, Spread, Persistence and Fade-out of Sylvatic Plague in Kaza- khstan," Proceedings of the Royal Society, Series B 278, no. 1720 (2011): 2915-23.
  9. For a discussion of the implications of transitory hosts of vectors, such as hyenas and white storks, to the spread of plague in the Ottoman context, see my "New Science and Old Sources," 213-16. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139004046.002 Published online by Cambridge University Press 93 · DOI
  10. Alexandre Yersin, "La peste bubonique à Hong-Kong," Annales de l'Institut Pasteur 8 (1894): 662-67. A near-simultaneous discovery was realized by the Japanese physician and bacteriologist Shibasaburo Kitasato, a former student of Robert Koch. 94
  11. Mark Achtman et al., "Yersinia pestis, the Cause of Plague, Is a Recently Emerged Clone of Yersinia pseudotuberculosis," PNAS 96, no. 24 (1999): 14043-48. More recent estimates project a slightly older date for the evolution of Y. pestis, e.g., see Yanjun Li et al., "Geno- typing and Phylogenetic Analysis of Yersinia pestis by MLVA: Insights into the Worldwide Expansion of Central Asia Plague Foci," PLoS ONE 4, no. 6 (2009): e6000;
  12. Yujun Cui et al., "Historical Variations in Mutation Rate in an Epidemic Pathogen, Yersinia pestis," PNAS 110, no. 2 (2013): 577-82.
  13. J. Parkhill et al., "Genome Sequence of Yersinia pestis, the Causative Agent of Plague," Nature 413, no. 6855 (2001): 523-27, quote on 523.
  14. Kirsten I. Bos et al., "A Draft Genome of Yersinia pestis from Victims of the Black Death," Nature 478, no. 7370 (2011): 506-10. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139004046.002 Published online by Cambridge University Press · DOI
  15. Unlike Y. pestis, Y. pseudotuberculosis is orally toxic to fleas, which suggests evolutionary changes between the pathogen and the vector. David L. Erickson et al., "Acute Oral Toxicity of Yersinia pseudotuberculosis to Fleas: Implications for the Evolution of Vector- borne Transmission of Plague," Cellular Microbiology 9, no. 11 (2007): 2658-66;
  16. B. J. Hinnebusch, "The Evolution of Flea-Borne Transmission in Yersinia pestis," Current Issues in Molecular Biology 7 (2005): 197-212.
  17. Florent Sebbane et al., "Role of the Yersinia pestis Plasminogen Activator in the Incidence of Distinct Septicemic and Bubonic Forms of Flea-borne Plague," PNAS 103, no. 14 (2006): 5526-30.
  18. Cui et al., "Historical Variations." 100 For the periodization of plague pandemics, see the introduction. 101 R. Devignat, "Variétés de l'espèce Pasteurella pestis: nouvelle hypothèse," Bulletin of the World Health Organization 4, no. 2 (1951): 247-63. 102 An exception to this was John Norris's suggestion that adaptation to different rodent species may have been responsible for biochemical differences of Y. pestis biovars. See Norris, "East or West? The Geographic Origin of the Black Death," Bulletin of the History of Medicine 51, no. 1 (1977): 22-24. This point is also highlighted in George D. Sussman, "Was the Black Death in India and China?," Bulletin of the History of Medicine 85, no. 3 (2011): 331. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139004046.002 Published online by Cambridge University Press 103 · DOI
  19. Mark Achtman et al., "Microevolution and History of the Plague Bacillus, Yersinia pestis," PNAS 101, no. 51 (2004): 17837-42. 104
  20. Michel Drancourt et al., "Genotyping, Orientalis-like Yersinia pestis, and Plague Pan- demics," Emerging Infectious Diseases 10, no. 9 (2004): 1585-92. 105 For a summary account of why this finding was criticized and how it was refuted, see Michaela Harbeck et al., "Yersinia pestis DNA from Skeletal Remains from the 6th Century AD Reveals Insights into Justinianic Plague," PLoS Pathogens 9, no. 5 (2013): e1003349. 106 In 2007, some French researchers triumphantly announced that all three historical pan- demics were caused by the Orientalis biovar. See Michel Drancourt et al., "Yersinia pestis Orientalis in Remains of Ancient Plague Patients," Emerging Infectious Diseases 13, no. 2 (2007): 332-33. This was once again followed by a round of stern criticism. See Harbeck et al., "Yersinia pestis DNA from Skeletal Remains." 107
  21. Stephanie Haensch et al., "Distinct Clones of Yersinia pestis Caused the Black Death," PLoS Pathogens 6, no. 10 (2010): e1001134; quote on 2. Ambiente Biologico nell'Europa Preindustriale. Secc. XIII-XVIII (Economic and Bio- logical Interactions in Pre-Industrial Europe from the 13th to the 18th Centuries), ed. Simonetta Cavaciocchi (Florence: Firenze University Press, 2010): 13-32.
  22. Geoffrey Parker, Global Crisis: War, Climate Change and Catastrophe in the Seventeenth Century (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2013). For the Ottoman case, see White, Climate of Rebellion in the Early Modern Ottoman Empire; White, "The Little Ice Age Crisis of the Ottoman Empire: A Conjuncture in Middle East Environmental History," in Water on Sand, ed. Alan Mikhail, 71-90;
  23. Faruk Tabak, The Waning of the Mediterranean, 1550-1870: A Geohistorical Approach (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008). 138
  24. S. Soliman et al., "Seasonal Studies on Commensal Rats and Their Ectoparasites in a Rural Area of Egypt: The Relationship of Ectoparasites to the Species, Locality, and Relative Abundance of the Host," Journal of Parasitology 87, no. 3 (2001): 545-53. 140
  25. Jacques M. May, "Map of the World Distribution of Plague," Geographical Review 42, no. 4 (1952): 629. 141
  26. See Tsiamis et al., "Earthquakes and Plague during Byzantine Times: Can Lessons from the Past Improve Epidemic Preparedness?," Acta Medico-Historica Adriatica 11, no. 1 (2013): 55-64. 142 An example for excess rain and flooding leading to plague, possibly as a result of forcing dislocation of rats, can be seen in the outbreak of 1791 in Egypt. For a detailed account of this outbreak, see Alan Mikhail, "The Nature of Plague in Late Eighteenth-Century Egypt," Bulletin of the History of Medicine 82, no. 2 (2008): 249-75;
  27. Mikhail, "Plague and Environment in Late Ottoman Egypt," in Water on Sand, 111-31. 143 İlyas, Tevfīk āt. This was a common view in Europe in the seventeenth century. See Daniel Gordon, "Confrontations with the Plague in Eighteenth-Century France," in Dreadful Visitations: Confronting Natural Catastrophe in the Age of Enlightenment, ed. Alessa Johns (New York: Routledge, 1999), 6.

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Authors
Varlik, N.
Venue
Cambridge University Press eBooks
Published
2015-07-22
OpenAlex
W3014315051
Cited by
146
References
2
Citations by year
2026: 9 · 2025: 8 · 2024: 10 · 2023: 8 · 2022: 11 · 2021: 16 · 2020: 30 · 2019: 35 · 2018: 12 · 2017: 2 · 2016: 5
FWCI
18.19
Type
book
Language
en
Open access
Locations
Cambridge University Press eBooks (publishedVersion)
Funders
  • Princeton University
  • University of Cambridge
  • Anadolu Üniversitesi
Topics
  • Social Sciences › Arts and Humanities › History › Ottoman and Turkish Studies
  • Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Ottoman Empire History and Society
  • Social Sciences › Political Science and International Relations › Historical Turkish Studies
Keywords
plague, Ottoman Empire, Black Death, epidemiology, environmental history, early modern state formation, early modern Mediterranean

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