1. The Historical Significance of Epidemics in the Middle East
- Author:
- Benan Grams
- Publication Date:
- 01-2023
- Content Type:
- Special Report
- Institution:
- Center for Contemporary Arab Studies (CCAS)
- Abstract:
- Just as the world was starting to recover from its battle with the still new and relatively unknown Covid-19 SARS virus, an old horrific disease has returned to the Arab world earlier this year, threatening to unleash another human disaster. In late August, cholera broke out in Syria’s northeastern region around the Euphrates. It quickly spread to other parts of the country, and by early October had become a regional epidemic, with cholera outbreaks reported in neighboring Lebanon. Cholera now threatens to reach other areas in the Middle East and beyond, accelerating it from an epidemic impacting a limited geographic area to a global pandemic hitting multiple regions around the world While cholera was the nineteenth century’s most dreaded disease, it was neither the first nor the only pandemic to impact societies around the world. Deadly diseases like plague and smallpox had terrorized the Middle East, Asia, Europe, and other parts of the world for centuries. Plague epidemics (طاعون), which recurred in the Levant, Mesopotamia, Anatolia and Egypt until the first half of the nineteenth century, were addressed by the prophet Mohammad and became a subject of debate in Islamic tradition. While plague targeted various segments of society, smallpox was a disease that killed primarily children. Those who survived it were left with scars but also immunity for life. Other documented infectious diseases like measles, tuberculosis, malaria, syphilis, typhoid, and typhus also killed hundreds of thousands of people, weakened armies, caused displacement, and caused economic devastation by leaving ripe agricultural crops unharvested.
- Topic:
- History, COVID-19, Epidemic, and Plague
- Political Geography:
- Middle East