How important was Caffa in the spread of the Black Death? Trade links between Asia and Europe were developing so strongly during the fourteenth century that Caffa was probably not the only source of the Black Death coming to Europe. The city of Messina in Sicily first recorded the plague shortly before the siege of Caffa. Nevertheless, the rapid spread to places that engaged in trade with Caffa suggests that it was important in hastening the disease into Europe, the Middle East and North Africa. During the last few months of 1347, the disease was carried to Constantinople, the southern shores of the Black Sea, Alexandria in Egypt and the islands of Sicily, Corsica and Sardinia in the Mediterranean. Most of this spread appears to have originated in Caffa. 3.14.3 The spread through the Middle East, Europe and North Africa The Middle East The plague reached the Middle East through multiple routes: In 1347, warriors returning to Baghdad from Tabriz in northern Persia brought the disease. Black rats infested their grain supplies and fleas carrying the plague survived on grain debris. The region, including modern-day Iraq, Syria and southern Türkiye, was soon ravaged. Pilgrims travelling to Mecca from northern India via the Persian Gulf and the Red Sea may have transported rats from Central Asia, spreading the plague to the Arabian Peninsula. Alexandria, a major trading port with links to Constantinople and Arab cities, was infected in 1347, soon after the siege of Caffa. The Black Death spread eastwards to Palestine and Syria in 1348, reaching Mecca.
SOURCE4 From Al-Maqrizi’ s account of Alexandria
A ship arrived in Alexandria. Aboard it were thirty-two merchants and a total of three hundred people — among them traders and slaves. Nearly all of them had died. There was no one alive on the ship, save four of the traders, one slave, and about forty sailors. These [forty-five] survivors soon died in Alexandria.
Europe By January 1348, cases of the plague were reported in both Genoa and Venice in northern Italy. From there it quickly spread to the rest of Italy, and to southern France and Spain by the middle of that year. Within a year all of western Europe was affected and, by 1350, the Black Death had turned east again and had reached Russia. SOURCE5 shows how quickly the Black Death spread throughout Europe between 1348 and 1351.
TOPIC3 Medieval Europe 95
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