Podcast about Justinian Plague

[guy]

 

A great podcast lecture about the Justinian plague:

 

Quote

The Plague of Justinian or Justinianic Plague (541–549 AD) was the beginning of the first plague pandemic, the first Old World pandemic of plague, the contagious disease caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis. The disease afflicted the entire Mediterranean Basin, Europe, and the Near East, severely affecting the Sasanian Empire and the Roman Empire and especially its capital, Constantinople. The plague is named for the Roman emperor in Constantinople, Justinian I (r. 527–565) who, according to his court historian Procopius, contracted the disease and recovered in 542, at the height of the epidemic which killed about a fifth of the population in the imperial capital. The contagion arrived in Roman Egypt in 541, spread around the Mediterranean Sea until 544, and persisted in Northern Europe and the Arabian Peninsula, until 549.

 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m000rc43

 

 

guy also known as gaius

(Thank you Dr. Tom for bring this to my attention)

 

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plague_of_Justinian

Edited August 27, 2021 by guy

[Novosedoff]

Some sources claim that the plague known as Justinian plague had been around the Byzantine empire for 2.5 centuries (see attached screenshot), it is also believed that the plague had contributed a lot as a factor to the Arab expansion due to the fact that the Arab world was isolated and so intact by the plague. Nonetheless one of Russian researchers recently compiled the time table by using the Arab sources, from which it could be seen that the plague also brought the devastation to the Arab world at least 14 times (sorry, I only have this page in Russian, but I attach it too in case someone would be interested to read)