Stearns Infectious Ideas

Contagion in Premodern Islamic and Christian Thought in the Western Mediterranean
Erscheinungsjahr 2011
ISBN: 978-1-4214-0105-8
Verlag: Johns Hopkins University Press
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: Adobe DRM (»Systemvoraussetzungen)

E-Book, Englisch, 0 Seiten, Format (B × H): 152 mm x 229 mm

Infectious Ideas is a comparative analysis of how Muslim and Christian scholars explained the transmission of disease in the premodern Mediterranean world.

How did religious communities respond to and make sense of epidemic disease? To answer this, historian Justin K. Stearns looks at how Muslim and Christian communities conceived of contagion, focusing especially on the Iberian Peninsula in the aftermath of the Black Death. What Stearns discovers calls into question recent scholarship on Muslim and Christian reactions to the plague and leprosy.

Stearns shows that rather than universally reject the concept of contagion, as most scholars have affirmed, Muslim scholars engaged in creative and rational attempts to understand it. He explores how Christian scholars used the metaphor of contagion to define proper and safe interactions with heretics, Jews, and Muslims, and how contagion itself denoted phenomena as distinct as the evil eye and the effects of corrupted air. Stearns argues that at the heart of the work of both Muslims and Christians, although their approaches differed, was a desire to protect the physical and spiritual health of their respective communities.

Based on Stearns's analysis of Muslim and Christian legal, theological, historical, and medical texts in Arabic, Medieval Castilian, and Latin, Infectious Ideas is the first book to offer a comparative discussion of concepts of contagion in the premodern Mediterranean world.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Stearns, Justin K.

Fachgebiete

• Medizin | Veterinärmedizin Medizin | Public Health | Pharmazie | Zahnmedizin Medizin, Gesundheitswesen Geschichte der Medizin
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Weltgeschichte & Geschichte einzelner Länder und Gebietsräume Europäische Geschichte
• Geisteswissenschaften Religionswissenschaft Religionswissenschaft Allgemein Religionsgeschichte
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Alte Geschichte & Archäologie Mittelalterliche, neuzeitliche Archäologie (Europa)
• Interdisziplinäres Wissenschaften Wissenschaften: Allgemeines Geschichte der Naturwissenschaften, Formalen Wissenschaften & Technik

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Preface
Acknowledgments
Chronological List of Relevant Muslim and Christian Scholars Who Wrote on Contagion in the Premodern Period
Introduction: Contagion and Causality in the Study of Premodern Muslim and Christian Societies
1. Contagion in the Commentaries on Prophetic Tradition
2. Contagion as Metaphor in Iberian Christian Scholarship
3. Contagion Contested: Greek Medical Thought, Prophetic Medicine, and the First Plague Treatises
4. Situating Scholastic Contagion between Miasmaand the Evil Eye
5. Contagion between Islamic Law and Theology
6. Contagion Revisited: Early Modern Maghribi Plague Treatises
Conclusion: Reframing Muslim and Christian Views on Contagion
Appendix A: Contagion in the Christian Exegetical Tradition
Appendix B: The Presence of Ash'arism in the Maghrib
Notes
Bibligraphy
Index

Über Autor(innen)

Stearns, Justin K.
Justin K. Stearns is an assistant professor in the Arab Crossroads Studies Program at New York University–Abu Dhabi.