Holy law

In the autumn of 1347, the Black Death arrived in Egypt. In the 18 months that followed, mosques turned into mortuaries across North Africa and the Levant. By the time the pestilence had subsided, up to a third of the Muslim world lay dead. Theologians delved into their books and found a comforting spin: infection was a blessing from God, they pronounced, and all believers touched with it were bound for paradise. 

The hordes who fled their villages to escape the disease were apparently unconvinced. So too was an Andalusian scholar named Ibn al-Khatib, whose observations showed it to be spread by human contagion, not the hand of the Almighty. Proof taken from the traditions, this man retorted to the jurists, had to yield to the perception of the senses.

Such collisions between revelation, reason and force of circumstance are central to Sadakat Kadri’s fascinating journey through the centuries of Islamic law.