Author | Lightnews

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Brooke @brooklynmarie.bsky.social · 6h

Never think that just one person cannot change the course of history, because it happens every moment of every single day

Nahyan Fancy @fancynahyan.bsky.social · 2d

Thanks to Kerra for this write up on the Plague maqama article. @uniofexeternews.bsky.social news.exeter.ac.uk/faculty-of-h...

Myths about rapid spread of the Black Death influenced by single “literary tale”, experts show

Myths about how the Black Death travelled quickly across Asia, ravaging Silk Route communities, date back to a single fourteenth-century source, experts have found. Modern portrayals of the plague qui...

news.exeter.ac.uk

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Nahyan Fancy @fancynahyan.bsky.social · 10h

@briandeer.com Not sure if it posted, so here again: I am not a demographer or a social historian so have no expertise on this matter. I presume that the journalist got the figure herself from the wikipedia entry on the Black Death, which cites (correctly) the figure from Ole Benedictow's book:

www.jstor.org

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Geoffrey Hughes @geofffhughes.bsky.social · 10h

If you haven't already cancelled your subscription for all of the other nonsense they've published, this seems like a good reason to do so. Be sure to tell them why too:

John Raimo @johnraimo.bsky.social · 10h

This guy (who not incidentally looks like a thumb)! Just "asking questions"! Because "Interesting Times" with the NYT imprimatur!

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Sarah E. Bond @sarahebond.bsky.social · 10h

The latest Pasts Imperfect is out! @rhigarthjones.bsky.social discusses Ottoman receptions of Roman antiquity. Then, Black Death mythbusting; wampum beads in Canada; celebrating Native American Heritage Month; ancient Mexican coprolites; ancient world journals by @yaleclassicslib.bsky.social & more!

Pasts Imperfect (11.6.25)

This week, historian of early Islamic material culture Rhiannon Garth Jones breaks down the reception of Roman antiquity during the Ottoman Empire. Then, dispelling myths about the Black Death; archae...

pasts-imperfect.ghost.io

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Nahyan Fancy @fancynahyan.bsky.social · 11h

I am not a demographer or a social historian so have no expertise on this matter. I presume that the journalist got the figure herself from the wikipedia entry on the Black Death, which cites (correctly) the figure from Ole Benedictow's book: www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctv...

The Complete History of the Black Death on JSTOR

The Black Death was a disaster of huge magnitude, shaking medieval Europe and beyond to its economic and social core. Building upon his acclaimed study of 2004,...

www.jstor.org

Nahyan Fancy @fancynahyan.bsky.social · 12h

She knows it, and it has been acknowledged several times, but I can still never thank @monicamedhist.bsky.social enough for all her work, help and conversations over the last 13 years in transforming my work, generally, and more specifically related to plague and disease history.

Monica H Green @monicamedhist.bsky.social · 23h

Thrilled to have this piece by Omar Muhammed & @fancynahyan.bsky.social out now. I'll be using it tomorrow in a talk at UC-Merced on "Where Do Pandemics Come From? Using Black Death Narratives to Rethink the Origin of Pandemics." Or the question we really need to ask: when are pandemics? A quick 🧵.

Nahyan Fancy @fancynahyan.bsky.social · 2d

Thanks to Kerra for this write up on the Plague maqama article. @uniofexeternews.bsky.social news.exeter.ac.uk/faculty-of-h...

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Nahyan Fancy @fancynahyan.bsky.social · 12h

Thanks to @mollyglick.bsky.social for this write up of our recently published article on plague maqamas for @nautil.us #plague #histmed www.yahoo.com/news/article...

Medieval Medical Misinformation Persists

A 14th-century tale still promotes dubious origins behind the deadliest known pandemic

www.yahoo.com

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Monica H Green @monicamedhist.bsky.social · 22h

You guessed it! From Ibn Taghribirdi's (and al-Maqrizi's) inflected 15th-century readings of Ibn al-Wardi's 14th-century maqama. Here's the summary from Omar & Fancy:

From Omar and Fancy 2025, p. 169. The full text is available open-access at this link: https://journals.uio.no/JAIS/article/view/12790.

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Monica H Green @monicamedhist.bsky.social · 22h

..."can be supported by eastern accounts." But Hecker (writing in 1832) didn't know about de Mussis, whose history hadn't yet been discovered. Rather, Hecker (w/o knowing it) was relying on Ibn al-Wardi's claim that the great mortality of 1348 had started 15 years prior. 1348 - 15 yrs = 1333. Bingo!

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Thread Reader by Skywriter @unroll.skywriter.blue · 21h

The thread as a shareable webpage: https://skywriter.blue/pages/did:plc:twqucin7jqhlteuk37lqltr7/post/3m4w5gedvls2d.

Page by Monica H Green | @monicamedhist.bsky.social - skywriter.blue

Thrilled to have this piece by Omar Muhammed & @fancynahyan.bsky.social out now. I'll be using it tomorrow in a talk at UC-Merced on "Where Do Pandemics Come From? Using Black Death Narratives to Rethink the Origin of Pandemics." Or the question we really need to ask: when are pandemics? A quick 🧵....

skywriter.blue

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Reposted by Nahyan Fancy

Monica H Green @monicamedhist.bsky.social · 23h

Thrilled to have this piece by Omar Muhammed & @fancynahyan.bsky.social out now. I'll be using it tomorrow in a talk at UC-Merced on "Where Do Pandemics Come From? Using Black Death Narratives to Rethink the Origin of Pandemics." Or the question we really need to ask: when are pandemics? A quick 🧵.

Nahyan Fancy @fancynahyan.bsky.social · 2d

Thanks to Kerra for this write up on the Plague maqama article. @uniofexeternews.bsky.social news.exeter.ac.uk/faculty-of-h...

Myths about rapid spread of the Black Death influenced by single “literary tale”, experts show

Myths about how the Black Death travelled quickly across Asia, ravaging Silk Route communities, date back to a single fourteenth-century source, experts have found. Modern portrayals of the plague qui...

news.exeter.ac.uk

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Reposted by Nahyan Fancy

Heba Gowayed هبة جويد @hebagowayed.bsky.social · 1d

Friends— here it is. Updated & expanded thanks to the space afforded to me in the @therumpus.net & the guidance of the brilliant @roxanegay.bsky.social’s edits. The win centers Muslims humanity — but what does that mean in a country that rejects that?

therumpus.net/2025/11/05/z...

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Matthew J (is) Tired @matthewjkuiper.bsky.social · 1d

Most humanities depts have those slightly cheesy lists and brochures meant to attract new majors and minors, “What you can do with a history/philosophy/religious studies/African studies/etc degree”.

Time to update our lists to include: “Mayor of New York”

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Matthew J (is) Tired @matthewjkuiper.bsky.social · 1d

Right on. And humanities also teach skills & dispositions which render those trained in them less susceptible to the kinds of propaganda by which powerful interests seek to control populations. They also teach you to write & speak intelligently, which Mamdani is very good at. Come study humanities!

Sheila Liming @seeshespeak.bsky.social · 1d

Mamdani got a humanities degree.

His win helps to illustrate that one of the central forces driving higher ed’s dissolution of the humanities is the fear that teaching people how power works can also lead to their interest in seizing it on behalf of the less powerful.

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Middle East Medievalists @mideastmedieval.bsky.social · 1d

A new article out in @alusuralwusta.bsky.social!

Al-ʿUṣūr al-Wusṭā: The Journal of Middle East Medievalists @alusuralwusta.bsky.social · 8d

Imperial Islam is Moon-worshiping—but Sun-worshiping too, straining algorithmically for the stars. Symbolized by 'Ali and Jesus, early modern Persianate Selenocentrism and Heliocentrism are Hermetically useful global-comparative categories for decolonizing the historiography of science and empire.

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Monica H Green @monicamedhist.bsky.social · 2d

But they got the historical gist right: "This discovery now frees researchers to investigate earlier plague outbreaks and rewrite the pandemic’s timeline." #BlackDeath #2ndPlaguePandemic #MedievalSky #EpiSky

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Anil Dash @anildash.com · 2d

This is worse than the worst thing ever attributed to any “Bernie Bro”. The Democratic leader literally refusing to say WHETHER HE VOTED FOR THE DEMOCRAT.

whoops, excuse me. oh man, my bad. @whoopsexcuseme.bsky.social · 2d

this shit right here is wrecker shit, as much as wrecker shit as any online leftist has done, if not more so. no wonder so many people are repulsed by anyone (rightly) saying 'vote blue no matter who', the most powerful elected Dem in the nation won't do it! it undermines the whole coalition! jfc

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Nahyan Fancy @fancynahyan.bsky.social · 2d

Thanks to Kerra for this write up on the Plague maqama article. @uniofexeternews.bsky.social news.exeter.ac.uk/faculty-of-h...

Myths about rapid spread of the Black Death influenced by single “literary tale”, experts show

Myths about how the Black Death travelled quickly across Asia, ravaging Silk Route communities, date back to a single fourteenth-century source, experts have found. Modern portrayals of the plague qui...

news.exeter.ac.uk

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Reposted by Nahyan Fancy

The Onion @theonion.com · 2d

In Memoriam:

Cheney Haunted By People He Didn't Manage To Kill In Iraq War

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Nahyan Fancy @fancynahyan.bsky.social · 2d

The first news story on the publication (to be honest, odd title since it is neither a poem nor debunked as literature, but nice of the journalist and publication to be interested enough in spreading news of it): thefreesheet.com/2025/11/04/m...

Medieval poem debunked after 700 years, rewriting Black Death history - theFreesheet

A single 14th-century rhyming poem, mistakenly believed to be a historical fact, has misled scientists and historians for 700 years about how the Black Death

thefreesheet.com

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Nahyan Fancy @fancynahyan.bsky.social · 2d

The article situates Ibn al-Wardi's famous risala within its literary context, showing it to be one of 3 maqamas composed on the Black Death in 749/1348-9 in Syria. All depict plague as an itinerant trickster, but only Ibn al-Wardi starts its fictitious journey in China. #MamlukStudies 2/2

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Nahyan Fancy @fancynahyan.bsky.social · 2d

I am delighted to announce that my co-authored article on Mamluk maqamas on #BlackDeath has just been published in a lovely special issue of JAIS. journals.uio.no/JAIS/article...
#plague #MedievalSky #GlobalMiddleAges #EnvironmentalHistory #histmed 1/2

Mamluk Maqāmas on the Black Death | Journal of Arabic and Islamic Studies

journals.uio.no

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Nahyan Fancy @fancynahyan.bsky.social · 3d

I still use LaTeX too for my CV! :) Okay thus far. I have been using TexWorks on PC and seems to be doing fine.

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Steven W. Thrasher is finishing The Overseer Class @thrasherxy.bsky.social · 3d

ON THE LITERAL EVE OF A DEMOCRATIC SOCIALIST MAYOR BEING ELECTED, ANNA WINTOUR KILLS PROGRESSIVE AND PROFITABLE TEEN VOGUE POLITICS DESK WHICH HAD JUST INTERVIEWED HIM

*That’s* the headline.

(Unfortunately there’s hardly any news outlet left to run it 😭)

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Monica H Green @monicamedhist.bsky.social · 3d

Oh wow, major work of interest to #MedievalSky #GlobalMiddleAges #EnvironmentalHistory. A new special issue devoted to "Environmental Challenges in Premodern Eurasian and Mediterranean Narratives": journals.uio.no/JAIS/article.... Kudos to the editors for bringing this work so quickly into print!

The titlepage for a special issue of the Journal of Arabic and Islamic Studies. The title of the collection is "Environmental Challenges in Premodern Eurasian and Medi-terranean Narratives."
Cover image: Illuminated Manuscript, Book of kings (Shāhnāma), Rustam kills a dragon (the third feat), Walters Art Museum Ms. W.602, fol. 76b,by Walters Art Museum Illuminated Manuscripts.

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