The Plague Tractate and Consolation Treatise by Marʿī b. Yūsuf al-Karmī al-Maqdisi (d. 1033/1624)
##plugins.themes.bootstrap3.article.main##
##plugins.themes.bootstrap3.article.sidebar##
Abstract
Among a great variety of Arabic sources for Family History and the History of Childhood in the pre-modern Middle East, the genre of consolation treatises for bereaved parents is unique.
Compiled mainly between the 14th and 16th centuries, against the background of the Black Death and its recurrences, these treatises give a general impression of the causes and the rates of infant and child mortality and thus contribute to our understanding of the reality of children's lives in medieval Middle Eastern societies. However, their primary significance lies in the psychological relationships between parents and children they reflect through their ample descriptions of adults' reactions to infant and child death and the growing awareness that their authors express of the difficulties that parents experience in coping with sudden loss. The main purpose of the treatises was to channel the strong emotional reactions of bereaved parents into legitimate Islamic modes of mourning.
In this article I discuss two works compiled by the Palestinian scholar Marʿī b. Yūsuf al-Karmī al-Maqdisī: His consolation treatise, Sulwān al-muṣāb bi-furqat al-aḥbāb (“Consoling those Smitten by Calamity on the Separation from their Beloved”) as well as a “plague tractate”, Kitāb taḥqīq al-ẓunūn bi-akhbār al-ṭāʿūn (“Examining the Opinions concerning the Reports on the Plague”, still in a manuscript form). These compilations, of different, yet close, genres, complement each other and highlight the connection between plagues and the emergence, in the high Middle Ages, of the group of consolation treatises for bereaved parents in Arabic.