Plague and Empire in the Early Modern Mediterranean World

✍ Scribed by Varlık, Nükhet

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Year: 2015
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 356
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

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 travelers' accounts, as well as recent scientific research, Nukhet 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.

✦ Table of Contents

Cover......Page 1
Half title......Page 3
Title......Page 5
Copyright......Page 6
Dedication......Page 7
Contents......Page 9
Figures, Maps, and Tables......Page 11
Acknowledgments......Page 13
Abbreviations......Page 17
Note on Transliteration and Dates......Page 19
Introduction......Page 21
Part I. Plague: History and Historiography......Page 35
1 A Natural History of Plague......Page 37
2 Plague in Ottomanist and Non-Ottomanist Historiography......Page 75
3 The Black Death and Its Aftermath (1347-1453)......Page 110
Part II. Plague of Empire......Page 149
4 The First Phase (1453-1517): Plague Comes from the West......Page 151
5 The Second Phase (1517-1570): Multiple Plague Trajectories......Page 180
6 The Third Phase (1570-1600): Istanbul as Plague Hub......Page 205
Part III. Empire of Plague......Page 225
7 Plague Transformed: Changing Perceptions, Knowledge, and Attitudes......Page 227
8 The State of the Plague: Politics of Bodies in the Making of the Ottoman State......Page 268
Epilogue......Page 312
Bibliography......Page 315
Index......Page 347

✦ Subjects

History