The Mystery of Black Death in Sub-Saharan Africa

In the midst of a pandemic it is easy to reflect upon the role diseases, plagues, and infectious illnesses have played throughout history. However, of all the pandemics through history one, the Black Death, stands above them all. Yet despite the infamy of the Black Death, the common historical narrative ignores the differences in impact the Black Death had throughout different regions. Nowhere more evident is this disparity than the historiography of the Black Death in Africa.

Throughout history, Africa has often been portrayed as an appendage, a side-show through which main characters wander through and influence before withdrawing. The common narrative of the Black Death fits this category. For a pandemic of the scope that the Black Death was, a pandemic that by fatality rate ultimately makes our present pandemic appear miniscule, little has been made of its effects on Africa. As present studies into how Covid-19 has a higher fatality rate among minority populations are rapidly becoming well-known it is a suitable time to revisit the infamous Black Death and learn about its impact on Africa.

Given the incorporation of North Africa into the Islamic world it is unsurprising the first outbreaks happened in North Africa. The first appearance of the Black Death in Africa was in Alexandria which was recorded by the great medieval Arabic-Egyptian historian Al-Maqrizi as having come from a slave-ship from the Golden Horde via Constantinople in 1347.[2] From there the disease spread along the trade routes, reaching up the Nile to Upper Egypt by 1349 and along the coast.[3] The plague struck Mecca in 1349,[4] but did not travel further south immediately. The fact the Black Death did not make it to Yemen is important for the history of Africa because Yemen was a crossroads where Red Sea trade, Indian Ocean trade, and East African trade intersected. Little evidence exists for it hitting East Africa but by the time Yemen was hit with the plague in a later wave during the 1350s[5] the chain of events caused by the Black Death would have already reduced the trade that linked East Africa with Yemen, thereby keeping East Africa relatively isolated by the disease.

The Black Death was next recorded along the North African coast in Tunis. The Marinid Sultanate, the then-rulers of Morocco, attempted to conquer Tunis in 1348 when the Black Death hit them. With their forces weakened they were defeated and immediately after the battle the Arabic-Tunisian historian Ibn Khaldūn recorded a “violent plague occurred.”[6] The retreating forces of the Marinid Sultanate would have brought the disease into their core territories. By the end of 1348 many of the ruling and upper classes of the Marinid Sultanate were dead or dying and the dynasty weakened substantially.