Alfonso De Cordob The Black Death

Alongside religious cause, Europeans blamed other people. By ‘other’ I mean someone who was different or foreign for their society. During ‘the Black Death’ period the Jews were considered as others, like outcasts of society. They were accused that they poisoned water sources, therefore they were subject to persecution, massacres. Mathias of Neuenberg and Alfonso de Cordoba shares a common idea that confirms Dols arguments saying that the Jews are responsible for poisoned water and food (Mathias of Neuenberg, “Chronilce”, p. 151; Alfonso de Cordoba, “Letter and Regimen concerning the Pestilence, p. 46). According to Alfonso de Cordoba, the Black Death was not resulted “from some constellation [of the planets] nor as a consequence of any natural
But besides it, if you deeply penetrate the original sources and a good look, you will notice that at some point Dols’ evidences fail. For instance, we can take a look at thoughts of physicians of the medieval period as Ibn Khatima and al-Khatib. In that times Muslim community was influenced by teachings of the Prophet Muhammad. And these teachings set a common behavior and religious principles when the disease appeared. One of the religious principles was that plague is not contagion. Al- Khatib provided contradictory interpretation of “no contagion of plague”. Because it was obvious that the notion of infection was present. The experience has shown that not by chance people fell ill after contact with infected, or not by accident people escaped infected communities, cities and as al-Khatib says “those who come into contact with [plague] patients mostly die, while those who do not come into contact survive” (Ibn al-Khatib, “A Very Useful Inquiry into the Horrible Sickness”, p.
Some physicians believed in medical approach of disease, another ones- in religious approach, thirds mixed medical and religious opinions. But what we can be sure is about the abundance of the historiography of the plague in Western Europe. Both in the initial sources and in the Dols’ essay, one can note that the main emphasis is on Europe and the authors of the chronicles are mainly Europeans (doctors, monks, lawyers, priests). It can be said that the arguments of Dols offers a Eurocentric perspective and have some misleading statements about Muslim’s response. This was most likely due to a small number of sources devoted to the effects of Black Death in the Middle East in comparison with European sources. Therefore, the convincing evidences of Dols are not so much related to bias and invalidity, but rather to the lack of valuable sources concerning the reactions of