Prayers - EpiMedDat

For Prayers, a total of 4 epidemic events are known so far. It is a keyword.

Table

Page	DateStart date of the disease.	SummarySummary of the disease event	OriginalOriginal text	TranslationEnglish translation of the text	ReferenceReference(s) to literature	Reference translationReference(s) to the translation
1348-05-31-Gaza	31 May 1348 ^JL	In the beginning of Rabīʿ I, 749 H (the month began on May 31, 1348) news about the Black Death in Gaza reached Aleppo while the author stayed there. The daily death toll had reportedly amounted to more than 1,000. Ibn Baṭṭūṭa then traveled on to Ḥoms which had already been affected by the plague; ca. 300 people died on the day of his arrival. He went on to Damascus whose inhabitants had fasted for three days [July 22 to 24] and on Friday set out for the Mosque of the Footprints (Aqdām). God subsequently reduced the burden of plague lasting on them. The daily death toll in the city had amounted to 2,400. Ibn Baṭṭūṭa traveled on to ʿAjlūn, and then to Jerusalem where the plague wave had already come to an end.		In the first days of the month of Rabīʿ I in the year forty-nine news reached us in Aleppo that plague had broken out in Ghazza and that the number of dead there exceeded thousand a day. I went to Ḥims and found that the plague had already struck there; about three hundred persons died on the day of my arrival. I went to Damascus and arrived on a Thursday; the people had been fasting for three days. On Friday they went to the Mosque of the Footprints, as we have related in the first book. God alleviated their plague. The number of deaths among them had risen to two thousand four hundred a day. Then I went to ʿAjlūn, and then to Bait al-Muqaddas [Jerusalem], where I found the plague had ceased.	Ibn Baṭṭūṭa - Tuḥfat al-nuẓẓār 1853-1859, vol. 4 (1858), pp. 319-320.	None
1348-06-29-Damascus	29 June 1348 ^JL	The number of plague deaths in Damascus increased in the month of Rabīʿ II 749 H (June 29–July 28, 1348). More than 200 people died per day, and the removal of the dead bodies was delayed. Poor people suffered the highest losses. On July 3, 1348, the Friday preacher prescribed to recite prayers and supplications asking for the plague to abate. The abolition of taxes (ḍamān) on funeral services by the governor of Syria (nāʾib al-salṭana) Sayf al-Dīn Arghūn-Shāh al-Nāṣirī was proclaimed on July 14. On July 21, it was announced that the inhabitants of Damascus should fast for three days, and on day four abase themselves before God at the suburban Mosque of the Footprint (Qadam) and implore him to end the plague; afterwards, people set out for the desert to recite prayers of supplication, including Jews, Christians, and Samaritans, high and low, etc.			Ibn Kathīr - Al-Bidāya wa-l-nihāya 1997-1999, vol. 18 (1998), pp. 503-504	Translation needed
1348-07-00-Damascus	July 1348 ^JL	In the days of the Black Death, in late July 1348, the governor of Syria Arghūn-Shāh ordered the inhabitants of Damascus to fast for three days and to close the food stalls in the market. People fasted from July 22 to 24. Afterwards, the elites and the other social strata flocked to the Umayyad Mosque to recite ritual prayers, supplications and invocations of God. They spent the night there, and at dawn the morning prayer was said. Then all the inhabitants of the city – men, women and children – went out to the Mosque of the Footprints (Aqdām), the amirs on bare feet. Muslims, Jews, and Christians all took part, carrying their respective Books and imploring God. At the mosque, people abased themselves before God and supplicated him. At noon they returned to the city and the Friday prayer was said. God, then, reduced their suffering. The daily death toll in Damascus did not reach 2,000 whereas in Cairo it amounted to 24,000.		Anecdote: I witnessed at the time of the Great Plague at Damascus in the latter part of the month of Second Rabīʿ of the year 49, a remarkable instance of the veneration of the people of Damascus for this mosque. Arghun-Shah, king of the amirs and the Sultan's viceroy, ordered a crier to proclaim through Damascus that the people should fast for three days and that no one should cook in the bazaar during the daytime anything to be eaten (for most of the people there eat no food but what has been prepared in the bazaar). So the people fasted for three successive days, the last of which was a Thursday. At the end of this period the amirs, sharifs, qadis, doctors of the Law, and all other classes of the people in their several degrees, assembled in the Great Mosque, until it was filled to overflowing with them, and spent the Thursday night there in prayers and liturgies and supplications. Then, after performing the dawn prayer [on the Friday morning], they all went out together on foot carrying Qur'ans in their hands — the amirs too barefooted. The entire population of the city joined in the exodus, male and female, small and large; the Jews went out with their book of the Law and the Christians with their Gospel, their women and children with them; the whole concourse of them in tears and humble supplications, imploring the favour of God through His Books and His Prophets. They made their way to the Mosque of the Footprints and remained there in supplication and invocation until near midday, then returned to the city and held the Friday service. God Most High lightened their affliction; the number of deaths in a single day reached a maximum of two thousand, whereas the number rose in Cairo and Old Cairo to twenty-four thousand in a day.	Ibn Baṭṭūṭa - Tuḥfat al-nuẓẓār 1853-1859, vol. 1 (1853), pp. 227-229	None
1402-00-00-Iceland	1402 ^JL	Great plague in Iceland in 1402	Jtem kom ut Hual einar Heriolfs son med flat skip er hann atti sialfur. kom þar ut j suo micil brada sott. at menn lagv daudir innan þriggia natta. Þar til er heitid uar þrimur lofmessvm med sæmeligv bæna halldi oc lios bruna. Jtem var lofad þurfostv fyrir kyndil messo. enn vatnfasta fyrir iol æuenliga. feingv sidan flestir skriptab mal adur enn lietust. Geck sotten um haustid fyrir sunnan land. med suo mickille ogn ad aleyddi bæi vida. enn folkid uar ecki sialfbiarga þat eptir lifde i morgum stodum. Sera Ali Svarthofda son deydi fyrst af kenne monnum um haustid. oc þar (!) brodir Grimur kirkiu prestur j Skalholti. sidan hver eptir annan heima presta. Sera Hoskulldur radsmadur a iola daginn sialfvann. Aleyddi þa þegar stadinn at lærdvm monnum oc leikvm. fyrir utan byskupinn sialfann oc ij leikmenn.	Then Hval-Einar Herjólfsson sailed out with the ship he had himself. A sudden and severe disease broke out there, so that people lay dead within three nights until three masses were sung with the appropriate prayers and burning candles. Likewise, fasting without water was vowed at Candlemas and fasting with water always before Christmas. Then, most could make their confessions before they died. In autumn, the plague raged in the south of the country with so much terror that villages died out almost entirely. And people were not able to safe themselves in many places. The first priest to die in the autumn was Father Áli Svarthöfðason, followed by Brother Grímur, parish priest in Skálholt, and then one resident priest after the other, the counsellor, Father Höskuldur, exactly on Christmas Day. Thus the episcopate (Skálholtsstaður) was emptied of learned men and lay people, save for the bishop himself and two lay people.	Lögmannsannáll. In: Gustav Storm: Islandske Annaler indtil 1578. Kristiania 1888, p. 286	Translation by Carina Damm

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