Plague in the Ottoman World

Episode 455

featuring Nükhet Varlık, Yaron Ayalon, Orhan Pamuk, Lori Jones, Valentina Pugliano, and Edna Bonhomme

narrated by Chris Gratien and Maryam Patton
with contributions by Nir Shafir, Sam Dolbee, Tunç Şen, and Andreas Guidi

The plague is caused by a bacteria called Yersinia pestis, which lives in fleas that in turn live on rodents. Coronavirus is not the plague. Nonetheless, we can find many parallels between the current pandemic and the experience of plague for people who lived centuries ago. This special episode of Ottoman History Podcast brings together lessons from our past episodes on plague and disease in the early modern Mediterranean. Our guests offer state of the art perspectives on the history of plague in the Ottoman Empire, and many of their observations may also be useful for thinking about epidemics in the present day.