Justinian's Plague and the Caliphate

Book excerpt: “Wealth without work Pleasure without conscience Science without humanity Knowledge without character Politics without principle Commerce without morality Worship without sacrifice. https://vidjambov.blogspot.com/2023/01/book-inventory-vladimir-djambov-talmach.html ... I forgot fear. I felt God /// and light embraced me. /// And time stopped for long… /// I came back to myself ... /// The book presents the history of the evolution of mankind over a certain period of time, covering the decline of antiquity and the beginning of the Middle Ages. It discusses the events taking place in the Mediterranean, southern Europe, the Middle East and Central Asia from the 6th to the 11th century, during the period of plague pandemics. It is shown that it was the plague that became the root cause of the sharp weakening of Byzantium and the Sassanian state, led to the devastation of a significant part of their territories and the complete restructuring of society, affected the demography, economy and even the political system. The book analyzes the reasons for the rise of the Arabs and the success of their campaigns of conquest, proves that the Caliphate as a state could not have emerged and occupied vast territories of its powerful neighbors if they had not been weakened and bled by the plague. The connection of pandemics with the rise and strengthening of the role of the Catholic Church in the West and Islam in the East is considered. It is shown how, with the arrival of the plague in the Caliphate, its gradual decline begins. This allows the author to deviate from the established opinion that the plague played only a secondary role in the fall of Byzantium and the Sassanid states, to conclude that it was the plague that was the real “director” of all events in the period under consideration, and that the Caliphate is the only state that was born "thanks" to the plague and was destroyed by it. The book shows how the search for countering the plague became for the Caliphate in the period from the 8th to the 11th century an impetus to accelerated evolution, comparable to the revolutionary one. This allows the author to deviate from the established opinion that the plague played only a secondary role in the fall of Byzantium and the Sassanid states, to conclude that it was the plague that was the real “director” of all events in the period under consideration, and that the Caliphate is the only state that was born "thanks" to the plague and was destroyed by it. The book shows how the search for countering the plague became for the Caliphate in the period from the 8th to the 11th century an impetus to accelerated evolution, comparable to the revolutionary one. This allows the author to deviate from the established opinion that the plague played only a secondary role in the fall of Byzantium and the Sassanid states, to conclude that it was the plague that was the real “director” of all events in the period under consideration, and that the Caliphate is the only state that was born "thanks" to the plague and was destroyed by it. The book shows how the search for countering the plague became for the Caliphate in the period from the 8th to the 11th century an impetus to accelerated evolution, comparable to the revolutionary one. /// A PANDEMIC is a history of wars against humanity, a struggle where, at the end of the day, human evolution, after initial failures, eventually won out. /// For one and a half thousand years, mankind has not stopped talking, debating and writing about the plague. This is understandable. The plague destroyed empires and forced to change the economic structure of civilizations, under its influence, whether new religions arose and new ethnic groups were formed. /// The book offered to the reader's attention is an attempt to penetrate into the essence of the plague problem, an attempt to comprehend its nature, to dispel the mysteries that envelop it. But my main goal is to raise an issue that goes beyond conventional wisdom. No serious historian denies that the plague has played a role in the history of civilizations. But for them the problem of the epidemic remained in the background for a long time, since all attention was focused on the analysis of the development of states, societies, economies and civilizations. At the same time, epidemics were viewed as some kind of external forces, although capable of causing disorder in the social order, but having nothing to do with the course of world history. The author of these lines is convinced that this is a clear underestimation of pandemics, which occupy the first place in importance in the changes taking place with humanity. /// My book is the history of the evolution of mankind at a certain period of time, the time of the decline of antiquity and the beginning of the Middle Ages. It has seven main parts. The first is directly based on Greek, Syrian and Muslim sources about the plague. I will have to consider in detail the events in the time frame from the 6th to the 8th centuries, including the rise and fall of Byzantium, the impact of the epidemic, which led to serious devastation in its territories and a complete restructuring of society, as well as the process of the formation of a completely new civilization, which is now commonly called the civilization of the West. In the same period, from the 6th to the 8th century, the rise and spread of the conquest campaigns of the Muslims, the rise and fall of the Umayyad Caliphate (in the 5th part) took place. From the 6th to the 8th century, we see the flourishing of the scientific upsurge of the Muslim Renaissance under the rule of the Abbasids. It must be said that it is the history of the Caliphate that can serve as a brilliant confirmation of the omnipotence of the plague. This empire, most likely, would not have arisen if Byzantium and the Sassanian state were not covered by pandemics. The Caliphate was born "thanks to" the plague, but it also destroyed him. /// In my book, I propose to look at history precisely through such a prism, using facts about epidemics and assigning them a key role in the historical events that happened to our ancestors. The interaction of disease with a species as a kind of test for survival in the face of mass mortality, the consequences of epidemic-induced genetic selection, manifested in the demographic processes of countries that have survived pandemics - this is what catches the eye in an unbiased analysis.