Merits of the Plague

The first English translation of an account by a fifteenth-century Egyptian scholar who was infected with the black plague and lost three children to it, arguing that there is merit in the plague if one understands it as an opportunity to practice patience and social care

A Penguin Classic

Merits of the Plague--the Islamic world's foundational work on the Black Death--invites us into a world where jinn could meddle in human affairs and the otherworldly rewards of martyrdom could lend meaning to an immense loss of life. Weaving together personal anecdotes, medicinal manuals, religious stories about Muhammad and his companions, law books, death-count registers, tales of unseen spirits, and eight centuries of plague-era poetry from all over the globe, Merits delivers both a profound meditation on what it means to survive devastation and a classical anthology of medicine, law, history, and letters.

At once spiritual and philosophical, mythic and scientific, timeless and timely, Merits of the Plague compels us to reflect on the way our own historic moment has shaped us, as well as what it means to continue to look inward and forward amid tragedy.