Catastrophe: An Investigation Into the Origins of the Modern World (45 page)

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Authors: David Keys

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BOOK: Catastrophe: An Investigation Into the Origins of the Modern World
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CHAPTER 2
 
  1. Rhapta was the name the Greek sailors gave to this city. It simply means “sewn boats” in ancient Greek and probably refers to the sewn boats presumably used by the inhabitants.
  2. Claudius Ptolemy,
    The Geography,
    translated and edited by E. L. Stevenson, published by New York Public Library, 1932, and republished by Dover Publications, Mineola, New York, 1991, page 38.
  3. The Periplus Maris Erythraei,
    text with introduction, translation, and commentary by L. Casson, Princeton University Press, 1989, page 61.
  4. From Ptolemy.
  5. From
    The Periplus.
  6. More detail on this change to pastoralism is provided later in this chapter.
  7. The plague organism is called
    Yersinia pestis,
    formerly
    Pasteurella pestis.
  8. The sixth- to seventh-century plague was the world’s first firmly attested outbreak of this disease. However, there must surely have been earlier major pandemics that history has not recorded, or that modern historians have not definitively attributed to plague. The Dark Age pandemic came to an end in c. 750 and the known world was not afflicted again until the Black Death of the fourteenth century. Occasional plague epidemics struck various parts of Europe in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, and also ravaged Britain, mainland Europe, and the Middle East in the second half of the seventeenth century. A third great pandemic broke out in the mid–nineteenth century, this time in China. Between 1894 and 1923 the disease spread from China throughout the world—especially India—and tens of millions of people died.
  9. The first clear exposition of the African rather than Asian origin of the sixth-to seventh-century plague pandemic is contained in “The Justinianic Plague—Probable Origins, Possible Effects,” an unpublished paper by Peter Sarris, prepared for a seminar held at Oxford University in May 1993.
  10. According to a Yemeni inscription. For further details, see Chapter 8.
  11. Prior to the mid–sixth century there is no sure evidence for any other plague epidemics affecting the Middle Eastern and Mediterranean world, although there certainly must have been at some stage in antiquity.
  12. After a flea has become infected, it takes some five to fourteen days for its gut to become blocked. However, the blockage can take place only if the temperature has fallen below 27.5° centigrade—exactly the sort of cooling effect that would have occurred in East and Central Africa during the 535/536 event. At above 27.5° plague bacteria release an anti–blood clotting enzyme that is designed to assist rapid spread of the disease within the host animal. Below 27.5° the anti-clotting agent is not released and clots form in the flea’s gut. In those regions of Africa some areas would have experienced such comparatively low temperatures for parts of the year in normal times, but in the mid–530s, the reduction in solar heat (and quite possibly consequent climatic phenomena) would have meant that much larger areas experienced temperatures of less than 27.5° for larger amounts of time. This would have played a key role in the spread of plague. Cooler temperatures would have also increased adult flea life span and population levels. The research on clot formation at 27.5° was published in an article by D. C. Kavanaugh on pages 264–273 in the
    American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene,
    volume 20, 1971.
  13. The disease is passed on because the gut-blocked flea regurgitates its blood meal—it cannot keep its meal down.
  14. Virtually all mammals are vulnerable to plague to one extent or another. Humans, cats, and some rodents are very susceptible, while others, including dogs, are more resistant.
  15. The Bantu—today Africa’s largest linguistic group—came originally from central-west Africa, started expanding outward from that area in around 500
    B
    .
    C
    ., and took over large tracts of East Africa and other areas between
    A
    .
    D
    . 1 and 500. Their economy has always been based on farming, especially of root crops. The Cushites were—and still are—a large, mainly pastoral African linguistic group that originated in Ethiopia in prehistoric times. At their largest extent, some two thousand years ago, they inhabited large swaths of what is now Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda, Somalia, Ethiopia, Sudan, and eastern Egypt.
  16. Each tusk would have weighed between 11 and 22 pounds and most would have been obtained by killing large solitary adult males. Today there are 500,000 elephants in Africa; twenty years ago there were 1.2 million, and 1,500 years ago there were probably several million—so the killing of up to 5,000 per year would not have appreciably affected population levels. A site on the island of Zanzibar—Unguja-ukuu—has produced evidence for east African trade with the Roman Empire in the form of imported Roman north African pottery dated by radio carbon tests and ceramic style to around the mid–sixth century
    A
    .
    D
    . Even more remarkably, the excavations recovered a
    Rattus rattus
    bone in similarly dated levels, as well as bones of large rodents that the inhabitants were apparently catching and eating for food. Here existed a fatal combination for the transmission of plague to Europe.
 
CHAPTER 3
 
  1. The main historical source is the history of the Chinese Zhou Dynasty, the
    Zhou shu,
    written in the early seventh century
    A
    .
    D
    . The Avars were known to the Chinese as the
    “rou ran”
    or the
    “ruan ruan”
    —literally, the “wriggly worms.”
  2. Originally Turkic nomads from northern Mongolia and southern Siberia, the Uighurs dominated Mongolia for many generations until 840, when they were defeated by the Kyrgyz and subsequently became farmers. Today there are six million Uighurs in China and Kazakhstan, and since 1921 they have experienced a national and cultural revival.
  3. The Kyrgyz are a Turkic-speaking people, originally from the Yenisey region and of Turkic and possible paleo-Siberian origin. Since late medieval times they have lived in what is now called Kyrgyzstan.
  4. The tree-ring data are from Khatanga, in northern Siberia, and were compiled by Stepan Shiyatov and Rashit Hantemirov of the University of Ekaterinburg.
  5. It is known from the
    Zhou shu
    that the Turks were at this stage involved in metalworking and that their leading element—the Asina people—had had a farming background, almost certainly involving, among other things, cattle rearing. Some central Asian Turkic peoples keep large herds of cattle to this day.
  6. To dominate and rule, the Avars (like all ruling nomadic steppeland elites) needed mobility and military clout. In order to attain these two objectives they required horses—indeed many horses per warrior male. But that dependence on mobility and horses substantially restricted the breadth of their economy to highly mobile livestock (chief among which were, of course, horses) and that made them more vulnerable to climatic crises when they occurred (especially given what we now know of horse vulnerability to severe climatic problems). But such climatic crises were very rare. The day-to-day, year-in-year-out maintenance of political and military power—and its horse-and mobility-oriented requirements—inevitably therefore took precedence over economic diversity and the ability to survive rare climatic crises.
  7. Also spelled A-Na-Kuei.
  8. The Turks’ practice of keeping slaves is mentioned in eighth-century inscriptions referring to earlier periods, and in Roman sources.
  9. Some also fled to China, according to the
    Bei shi
    (the
    History of the Northern
    Dynasties
    ). There they were seized, bound, and handed over to the Turks. Every man over sixteen—some 3,000 in all—was beheaded. Those under sixteen were enslaved.
  10. Horse numbers may well have recovered to some extent in the decade after the worst of the drought—but not in time or in sufficient numbers to reverse the political damage the Avars had suffered.
  11. The Kutrigurs were first attacked by the Avars in the mid-550s. They therefore fled west and invaded Roman territory, causing mayhem in 558–559 (for more detail see page 34). These Kutrigurs then retreated and were subsequently attacked again, and finally conquered, by the Avars in the 560s.
 
CHAPTER 4
 
  1. The description is from
    Maurice’s Strategikon,
    written by Emperor Maurice in the 590s, probably revised by Emperor Heraclius in the 620s, and translated by George T. Dennis, University of Pennsylvania Press, 1984. As I have already said, the Avar hordes also included large numbers of other steppeland people.
  2. According to Procopius.
  3. From Procopius (
    Wars
    VII), translated by H. B. Dewing, Loeb Classical Library, published by Harvard University Press and Heinemann.
  4. From an unpublished English translation by Peter Llewellyn, University of Wales, retired.
  5. The Emperor Maurice and His Historian,
    Michael Whitby, Oxford University Press, 1988.
  6. Maurice’s campaign against the Avars lasted seasonally from 591 to 602. It was his first long-lasting, and indeed his first offensive, campaign against them. Previous anti-Avar operations in 587 and 589 had been mainly defensive and had each been limited to a single fighting season.
 
CHAPTER 5
 
  1. His youngest boy, whose name is thought to have been Justinian.
  2. From
    The Chronicle of Theophanes,
    written in c. 813 and partly based on now substantially lost works by the seventh-century historian Theophylact, adapted by Michael Whitby especially for this book from Harry Turtledove’s translation, University of Pennsylvania Press, 1982.
  3. Theophanes.
  4. Theophanes.
  5. The supporters of one of the empire’s two main chariot-racing organizations, which had green as its emblematic color.
  6. The praetorian prefect, Constantine Lardys.
  7. Theophanes.
  8. Tiberias, Peter, Paul, Justin, and Justinian, but not his eldest son, Theodosius.
  9. Anastasia, Theoctiste, and Cleopatra.
  10. Constantine Lardys was the imperial official who was in charge of taxation and financial administration. The fate of Theodosius is still somewhat of a mystery. Some sources say he was captured and executed, as recounted here. Others maintain he escaped to Persia and was crowned there by the Persian emperor, Chosroes II, as “Roman emperor in exile,” but many historians believe that the “exiled emperor” was an impostor.
  11. From an unpublished translation by Peter Llewellyn, University of Wales, retired, of the
    Chronicon Paschale,
    written by anonymous clerics in Constantinople during the first half of the seventh century. There is a published translation of the
    Chronicon Paschale
    by Michael and Mary Whitby, Liverpool University Press, 1989.
  12. Maurice had helped reinstate the Persian king, Chosroes II, in 591 after a Persian coup d’etat in 590 had temporarily ousted his family from power.
  13. According to the late-seventh-century Egyptian bishop and chronicler, John of Nikiu, C.103.
  14. Theophanes.
  15. John of Nikiu,
    C.105, R. H. Charles, London, 1916.
  16. The Miracles of St. Demetrius.
  17. Chronicon Paschale.
  18. Theophanes.
 
CHAPTER 6
 
  1. In late antiquity and medieval times the Adriatic town we now call Split was known variously as Aspalathos, Spalaton, Palatium, or Spalato.
  2. From
    The Miracles of St. Demetrius.
  3. Vasmer’s work, published in 1941, is controversial, particularly in Greece—but the general pattern his place-name survey reveals is probably a fairly accurate one, reflecting a substantial Slav influx into Greece in the sixth and seventh centuries and undoubtedly on several occasions since then.
  4. Many of these Slav place-names have been changed to new Greek ones in recent decades.
  5. Vasmer, 1941.
  6. The Miracles of St. Demetrius,
    the second miracle of the second collection.
  7. From the book
    On the Capture of Jerusalem,
    written around 620 by a monk called Antiochus Strategus, translated by F. C. Conybeare,
    English Historical
    Review,
    volume 25, 1910, pages 502–517.
  8. Antiochus Strategus.
  9. Antiochus Strategus.
  10. From the
    Chronicon Paschale.
  11. From the
    Chronicon Paschale.
 
CHAPTER 7
 
  1. Towns were often net consumers of wealth rather than net contributors—thus the difference between 33 percent and 10–15 percent.
  2. By Justinian, according to Procopius and John Lydus.
  3. There were literally fewer citizens to man the same circumference of city walls.
  4. See Chapter 4.
  5. Islam
    actually means “submission,” referring to the necessity of human obedience to God.
 
CHAPTER 8
 
  1. Surah 34, verse 16. All material from the Koran in this book is according to the translation by Muhammad Marmaduke Pickthall, published by HarperCollins, London.
  2. The dam burst sometime between 541 and 548, most probably in 542 or 547, depending on the precise modern interpretation of the ancient Yemeni dating system. The breaking of the dam (and subsequent dam bursts at Marib) has also been identified geomorphologically by a Swiss scholar, Ueli Brunner, who published his findings in
    Die Erforshung der Antiken Oase von
    Marib Mit Hilse Geomorphologischen unter Suchungs Methoden
    (volume 2 of
    Archaeologische Berichte aus Dem Yemen
    ) published by Philipp von Zabern, Mainz, 1983. Other irrigation systems in Yemen may also have been damaged or abandoned at roughly the same time. In the Wadi Markhah in central Yemen, Brunner has identified, since 1992, at least half a dozen settlements, including four small towns that appear to have become deserted in the sixth or seventh century. Abandonment is even recorded in Arab tradition, which maintains that many people left Wadi Markhah to take part in the early Islamic expansion. One group that, according to local tradition, did
    not
    leave is still known today as the al-Nisiyin—the forgotten people. Another area, Wadi Jawf, in northern Yemen, has at least a dozen deserted settlements, most of which were also probably abandoned in the sixth or seventh century.
  3. The eighth-century Arab historian Ibn Hisham, as published in notes appended to
    The Life of Muhammed—a Translation of Ibn Ishaq’s Sirat Rasul Allah,
    by A. Guillaume, 1955/1967/1996.
  4. From page 17 of volume VI of
    The History of al-Tabari,
    translated and annotated by W. Montgomery Watt and M. V. McDonald, State University of New York Press, 1998.
  5. From page 16 of volume VI of
    The History of al-Tabari.
  6. From page 27 of
    The Life of Muhammad—a Translation of Ibn Ishaq’s Sirat Rasul
    Allah,
    translated by A. Guillaume, Oxford University Press, Karachi, 1967.
  7. Paraphrased quote from Theophalact Simoccata. The exact words, as translated by Michael Whitby, read: “The day without evening will dwell among mortals and the expected fate will achieve power when the forces of destruction will be handed over to dissolution and those of the better life hold sway.” The “day without evening” and the “expected fate” refer to the millennium of divine rule and peace which Christians expected would precede the apocalypse. It was to be a millennium-long Sabbath, which would follow six millennia of world history, as the peaceful holy Sabbath day, the Christian Sunday, follows the six secular days of the week. The “forces of destruction” represented Satan.
  8. As the Jews did not accept the Christian claim that Jesus was the Jewish Messiah, they were still waiting for the Messiah to arrive.
  9. Doctrina Iacobi Nuperbaptizati,
    the doctrine of the newly baptized Jacob. From page 317 of
    The Later Roman Empire 284–602: A Social, Economic and Administrative Survey
    by A. H. M. Jones, Blackwell, Oxford, 1964, 1990.
  10. Doctrina Iacobi Nuperbaptizati.
  11. The Koran, the holy book of Islam, is seen by Muslims as the word of God, as revealed to Muhammad in a series of divine encounters between 600 and 632.
  12. Surah 30, verses 2 and 7.
  13. Surah 30, verse 10.
  14. Surah 20, verse 102.
  15. Surah 20, verse 24.
  16. Surah 20, verses 124 and 127.
  17. Attributed to Mughira ibn Shu’ba in the
    Kitab al-Kharaj,
    by Abu Yusef Yaqub ibn Ibrahim.
  18. Surah 8, verse 52.
  19. Surah 8, verse 55.
  20. Surah 8, verse 65.
  21. Surah 8, verses 12 and 13.
  22. Surah 8, verse 15.
  23. Surah 8, verse 16.
  24. Surah 8, verse 67.
  25. From the eighth-century Arab historian Ibn Hisham, as quoted on page 242 of
    Meccan Trade and the Rise of Islam,
    by P. Crone, 1987. Reprinted by permission of Princeton University Press.
  26. From Abid ibn al-Abras IV, 14:17 as translated by C. J. Lyall in
    The Diwans of
    ‘Abid ibn al-Abras
    as quoted in
    Meccan Trade and the Rise of Islam
    by P. Crone.
  27. The etymology of
    mashrafi
    is unclear. Various interpretations have been made suggesting either a south Syrian or alternatively Yemeni origin for the weapon—or that it was made by a famous blacksmith of that name.
  28. Ibn Hisham, as translated by A. Guillaume and quoted in
    Meccan Trade and
    the Rise of Islam,
    by P. Crone, page 244.
  29. From
    Meccan Trade and the Rise of Islam.

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