| This dissertation examines the concept of contagion in Muslim and Christian thought during the Medieval and Early Modern periods, focusing on materials produced in Iberia and North Africa. Alternating between Muslim and Christian scholarship, it identifies debates in both traditions that defined how contagion was discussed and constructed by representatives from both traditions. Considering the differences between the two scholarly traditions, the approach taken to the respective materials differs. The three chapters devoted to contagion in Muslim scholarship (1) identify relevant Prophetic traditions and the significance they were given in the commentaries on these traditions, (2) examine how discussions of contagion involved both legal and theological traditions, and (3) employ the genre of plague treatises to trace the continuing debate of contagion from after the Black Death down to the 19 th century. In the two chapters dealing with Christian material, the dissertation (1) focuses on the metaphorical uses of contagion in scholarship produced in the Iberian peninsula between the 7th and 15 th centuries, and (2) provides an examination of the full conceptual meaning of contagion in medical and scientific writings in Christian Iberia in the 14th and 15th centuries. The juxtaposition of these two scholarly traditions reveals the variety of opinion within both bodies of work, and, while elucidating certain qualitative differences, cautions against employing these differences to identity Muslim or Christian cultural or civilizational traits. Attention is especially drawn to the danger of identifying certain pre-modern scholars such as the Granadan vizier Ibn al-Khat&dotbelow; ib with modern conceptions of science, religion, and the relationship between the two. Instead, the dissertation draws attention to the importance of understanding both scholarly traditions as discursive and flexible. |
