A 15th-Century Islamic Scholar Has Surprisingly Contemporary Advice on Handling Pandemics

History Unplugged Podcast · Apr 13, 2023 · 51m

Six hundred years ago, Ibn Hajar al-Asqalani —an esteemed judge, poet, and scholar in Cairo— wrote “Merits of the Plague,” a landmark work of history and religious thought that looked at accounts of centuries worth of plague outbreak and their possible origins, along with explanations of why God would allow such devastation to take place. This work wasn’t only theoretical but also based on experience. He survived the bubonic plague, which took the lives of three of his children, not to mention tens of millions of others throughout the medieval world. Holding up an eerie mirror to our own…