In the mid-1300s, a species of bacteria spread by fleas and rats swept across Asia and Europe, causing deadly cases of bubonic plague. The Black Death is one of the most notorious pandemics in histori...

Why would the reading of a 14th-century African-Arabic text, Muqaddimah, and its author, Ibn Khaldun (1332-1406), be of interest to us in the 21st century? This question takes us to a wider discussion...