Main description:

A new generation of scholars is currently voicing its discontent with a scholarly tradition of interpreting and explaining epidemic outbreaks, their nature, and the social and political responses they generated. More specifically, assumptions about the actual identity of diseases that struck the Islamic Mediterranean in the early modern era have recently come under close scrutiny. The scholarly tradition of assuming that the Islamic world was fatalistic in responding to epidemic disease is also coming under strenuous attack. This collection of articles aims to tackle these misconceptions head-on. Contributors to this project will be closely scrutinizing the nature of epidemic diseases that struck the Islamic Mediterranean as well as the different forms of contagion, and the myriad ways in which Muslim societies responded to such diseases. This volume aims to fill a major lacuna in the existing literature. It will contribute to Ottoman studies and the history of medicine, and be relevant to wider, global studies of the role of epidemics in history, as well as early modern and modern state formation processes.

Contents:

Contents: