The plague in the Umayyad era

This book consists of three chapters and a conclusion. In the first chapter, The Plague and the Medieval World, Al-Adwi discusses the position of the plague in the medieval world, its impact on various aspects of life in the Middle Ages, and also includes a brief about this deadly epidemic, and its causes of destruction among people in the tragic manner mentioned by ancient sources. In the second section of the same chapter, there is talk about the plague that occupied a prominent place in Arab-Islamic heritage in general; as it was considered a major human catastrophe, it raised many deep religious and philosophical questions that went beyond the narrow scope of medicine, disease, and prevention, such as: Was the epidemic that affects people indiscriminately a collective punishment from Allah for humans’ sins? Is there contagion? If there is contagion, does the disease itself infect, or is it due to a flaw created by Allah in it? The plague formed a scientific subject intersecting fields of Hadith, jurisprudence, philosophy, history, and medicine, which is the field of specialization. According to him, the issue of contagion itself contained significant legal complexities, as jurists and hadith scholars equated it with other pagan customs that Arabs used to follow in the pre-Islamic era. In the second chapter, Outbreaks of Plagues in the Umayyad Era, the author counts the plagues that occurred during the Umayyad period, and chronologically arranges their succession, as a prelude to studying their effects. He also presents reports of plagues in the early Islamic period from narrators, historians, and chroniclers, discusses the issues surrounding them, most notably the confusion among narrators and historians in counting the plagues in the Umayyad era, sometimes mixing them up, as well as the disorder in accurately dating them. It also includes a statistical evaluation of plague outbreaks during the Umayyad period from Muawiya ibn Abi Sufyan to Marwan ibn Muhammad. He writes: "That period in the history of the Islamic world witnessed about 20 plagues, at an average of one plague every approximately four and a half years, which is a huge rate. Comparing this rate with the renewal rate of epidemics in the Middle East, North Africa, and Europe during the late Middle Ages demonstrates the profound impact the plague left during the Umayyad era." In the third chapter, The Demographic Effects of Plagues and Their Reflection on Society and the State in the Umayyad Era, Al-Adwi discusses the violent demographic disasters caused by the plague; "Although we completely lack documents related to this era, analyzing some reliable news found in certain literary sources helped me draw an approximate picture of the survival rates relative to victims in the plagues of the Umayyad period; based on available data from literary sources, I estimate the survival rate to victims at about 1:14 on average, which is a catastrophic ratio in every sense of the word." The chapter also discusses the impact of the epidemic on social, economic, and political structures during the Umayyad period. The most significant outcome of the successive plague outbreaks in the Umayyad era was the reluctance of the Umayyad caliphs to reside in Damascus; prior to Hisham ibn Abd al-Malik, the caliphs would retreat to the wilderness and deserts or stay in secluded places like monasteries to avoid the epidemic. Al-Adwi writes: "The plague contributed to significant demographic changes, which later had political repercussions; the state relocated a large number of Zanj to Soudan to fill the demographic void caused by the plague in those regions."