The Black Death sweeps Europe, North Africa and the Middle East

Date

1347–1351 CE

Category

Social & demographic

Region

Europe, North Africa and the Middle East

Era

Post-Classical / Medieval

Significance

In October 1347 Genoese ships fleeing the besieged Crimean port of Caffa carried plague to Sicily, and within three years the pandemic caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis had reached almost every corner of Europe, the Middle East and North Africa.

Spreading in bubonic and pneumonic forms, the Black Death killed an estimated one third to one half of Europe's population between 1347 and 1351, with worst-hit areas losing up to 80 percent of their people; Florence fell from roughly 110,000 inhabitants to about 50,000, and cities such as Hamburg and Bremen lost 60 to 70 percent. Worldwide deaths are reckoned in the tens to over a hundred million. The demographic catastrophe transformed European society: acute labour shortages raised peasant wages and eroded serfdom, fuelling revolts and the long decline of the manorial system; survivors gained higher living standards; and the disaster shook religious confidence, spurring flagellant movements and violent pogroms against Jewish communities scapegoated for the plague. Recurring outbreaks over the following centuries kept population low. The Black Death stands as one of the deadliest pandemics in recorded history and a pivotal turning point in the social and economic transformation of the late medieval world.

Empires active in 1347–1351 CE

• Kanem-Bornu Empire
  700 CE – 1900 CE
• Mongol Empire
  1206 CE – 1368 CE
• Ottoman Empire
  1299 CE – 1922 CE
• Solomonic dynasty
  1270 CE – 1974 CE
• Byzantine Empire
  330 CE – 1453 CE
• Sukhothai Kingdom
  1238 CE – 1438 CE

Related social & demographic events

• Siege of Kaffa and the spread of the Black Death along Mongol trade routes
  1346–1347 CE
• The Columbian Exchange and the demographic collapse of Indigenous America
  From 1493 (16th century)
• Banu Hilal Migration Arabises the Maghreb
  c. 1050 onward (11th century)
• Rise of Cahokia, the largest city of Mississippian North America
  c. 1050 CE
• Zanj Rebellion against the Abbasid Caliphate
  869-883 CE
• Collapse of the Classic Maya lowland city-states
  c. 800–900 CE

Further reading

The Great Mortality: An Intimate History of the Black Death, the Most Devastating Plague of All Time

If you read one book

The Great Mortality: An Intimate History of the Black Death, the Most Devastating Plague of All Time

John Kelly

Vivid narrative history of the medieval pandemic.

Get it on Amazon →

Also worth reading

• A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century — Barbara W. TuchmanAmazon →
• The Black Death: A Personal History — John HatcherAmazon →

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