Abstract

This article considers the response of two influential figures of the medieval Islamic west, the historian ‘Abd al-Raḥmān Ibn Khaldūn and the court physician Muḥammad al-Shaqūrī, to the onset of the Black Death in 1348. Both men experienced the Black Death at first hand, and elucidating how the trauma of plague influenced their work forms a significant portion of this paper. Furthermore, understanding how the profound transformation brought about by the Black Death on the physical and demographic landscape of North Africa and Islamic Spain actively shaped the ideas articulated by Ibn Khaldūn and al-Shaqūrī is a topic of signal interest for the article.