The Nature of Plague in Late Eighteenth-Century Egypt

This article uses an examination of the 1791 plague in Egypt to explore the relationships among disease, famine, flood, drought, and death in late eighteenth-century Egypt. It analyzes how plague functioned as part of a regular biophysical pathology of the environment in which the disease came and went as one iteration in a cycle that included famine, wind, flood, drought, price inflation, and revolt. Using the works of Egyptian chroniclers, archival materials, secondary studies, and traveler accounts, this article integrates plague into the study of the Egyptian environment by showing how it was a regular and expected part of life in Egypt.