Overview
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.
Full Product Details
Author: Justin K. Stearns (New York University)
Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press
Imprint: Johns Hopkins University Press
Dimensions:
Width: 15.20cm
, Height: 2.50cm
, Length: 22.90cm
Weight: 0.544kg
ISBN: 9780801898730
ISBN 10: 0801898730
Pages: 304
Publication Date: 27 May 2011
Recommended Age: From 17
Audience:
Professional and scholarly
,
Professional & Vocational
,
Postgraduate, Research & Scholarly
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active
Availability: Out of stock
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Reviews
A welcome addition to the growing literature on plague -- and medical thought -- in the premodern Islamic world. Stearns's translations add new voices to those already known, and approach known figures with subtlety and nuance, challenging or at least refining the conclusions of the established scholarship... Stearns has provided future students commanding the requisite skills and depth of vision both a model and a solid target. -- Joseph P. Byrne American Historical Review 2012 Provides readers not only with a fascinating, beautifully researched account of contagion and plague in the premodern Western Mediterranean, but also with a series of thought-provoking new approaches to religious exegesis, legal interpretation, and literary production, and a set of methodological models that should serve scholars in the fields far beyond the realm of fourteenth- and fifteenth-century studies of illness and health in the Maghrib. The book is a fascinating read. -- Ruth A. Miller Journal of the American Oriental Society 2012
A welcome addition to the growing literature on plague-and medical thought-in the premodern Islamic world. Stearns's translations add new voices to those already known, and approach known figures with subtlety and nuance, challenging or at least refining the conclusions of the established scholarship... Stearns has provided future students commanding the requisite skills and depth of vision both a model and a solid target. -- Joseph P. Byrne American Historical Review 2012 Provides readers not only with a fascinating, beautifully researched account of contagion and plague in the premodern Western Mediterranean, but also with a series of thought-provoking new approaches to religious exegesis, legal interpretation, and literary production, and a set of methodological models that should serve scholars in the fields far beyond the realm of fourteenth- and fifteenth-century studies of illness and health in the Maghrib. The book is a fascinating read. -- Ruth A. Miller Journal of the American Oriental Society 2012
Author Information
Justin K. Stearns is an assistant professor in the Arab Crossroads Studies Program at New York University-Abu Dhabi.
