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Science

The treatment of Ibn al-Khatib, a genius scientist who was the first to correctly categorize the plague as contagious, shows that the Nasrid Dynasty wasn’t ready for modern science that disagreed with the church. Ibn al-Khatib was born on November 16, 1313 in Loja, near Granada. He became a secretary in the service of Yusuf I under the vizier Ali b. al-Djayyab. When the vizier died of the plague in January 1349, Ibn al-Khatib was promoted to vizier. He stayed as vizier when the sultan changed to Muhammad V. When Muhammad V was removed from office around 1360, Muhammad V and Ibn al-Khatib were sent to Morocco. Muhammad V and Ibn al-Khatib regained their respective powers in 1362. His most important work was his treatise on the black death Muqni’at as-sa’il ‘an marad al-ha’il, or Muqni’at for short.
Before al-Khatib, plagues were thought of as a “miasma”, a noxious pollution of the atmosphere. He was the first to accurately categorize them as a contagion that spread directly from person to person, a prediction well ahead of his time. The Muqni'at gives a clear description of t...

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