The Great Plague and Famine

In 448 AH famine and plague spread across Baghdad, Egypt, Mecca, the Hijaz, Khurasan, the mountain lands, and indeed the whole world. The kurr of wheat in Baghdad rose to ninety dinars and then to a hundred and eighty, and a thousand souls died each day. ²

Ibn al-Jawzi describes the ordeal in a manner rare in the cultural history of Baghdad. The sultan shrouded eighteen thousand people from his own wealth, and four or five were carried in one coffin. A perfumer sold a thousand bottles of syrup in one day. Then, in 449 AH, a letter arrived from merchants of Transoxiana reporting that the plague had carried away eighteen thousand bodies in a single day in their region. The dead were counted until the letter was written, and they came to one million six hundred and fifty thousand. Reports of the same kind came from Azerbaijan, Ahwaz, Wasit and Kufa, so that pits were dug to take twenty at a time and they were thrown into them. The poor ate dogs and dug up graves; the doors of houses whose people had died were sealed; trade came to a halt, and people had no occupation but washing and burying the dead. All the people repented and gave away most of their wealth; they poured out wine, smashed musical instruments, and kept to the mosques. Every house in which there was wine saw its people die in a single night. ³