Merits of the Plague

The preeminent meditation on plagues and pandemics from the Islamic world, now in English for the first time

A Penguin Classic

Six hundred years ago, the author of this landmark work of history and religious thought—an esteemed judge, poet, and scholar in Cairo—survived the bubonic plague, which took the lives of three of his children, not to mention tens of millions of others throughout the medieval world. Holding up an eerie mirror to our own time, he reflects on the origins of plagues—from...