page_title: Plague of Amwas
section_title: Recurrences
hierarchical_section_title: Plague of Amwas / Consequences / Long-term political and societal effects / Recurrences
caption_attribution_description: North gate of the city of Resafa-Sergiupolis
context_page_description: The plague of Amwas, also spelled plague of Emmaus, was a bubonic plague epidemic that afflicted Islamic Syria in 638–639, toward the end of the Muslim conquest of the region. It was likely a reemergence of the mid-6th-century Plague of Justinian. Called after Amwas in Palestine, the principal camp of the Muslim Arab army, the plague killed up to 25,000 soldiers and their relatives, including most of the army's high command, and caused considerable loss of life and displacement among the indigenous Christians of Syria. The appointment of Mu'awiya ibn Abi Sufyan to the governorship of Syria in the wake of the commanders' deaths paved the way for his establishment of the Umayyad Caliphate in 661, while recurrences of the disease may have contributed to the Umayyad dynasty's downfall in 750. Depopulation in the Syrian countryside may have been a factor in the resettlement of the land by the Arabs unlike in other conquered regions where the Arabs largely secluded themselves to new garrison cities.
  The plague of Amwas received more attention in the Arabic sources than any other epidemic until the 14th-century Black Death.
context_section_description: There were recurrences of the plague in Syria–Palestine about every decade between 688/89 and 744/45. "The Umaiyad [sic] dynasty was literally plagued by this disease", in the words of Dols. The deaths of the Umayyad caliphs Mu'awiya II (r. 683–684), Marwan I (r. 684–685), Abd al-Malik (r. 685–705), Sulayman (r. 715–717) and the Umayyad governors in Iraq al-Mughira ibn Shu'ba (r. 661–671) and Ziyad ibn Abihi (r. 685–673) may all possibly have been caused by the plague epidemics in Syria and Iraq. The caliphs routinely withdrew from the cities to their desert palaces when the plague emerged during the summer months. Notable among them was Caliph Hisham (r. 724–743), who preferred his palace at Rusafa over Damascus because he viewed the latter to be unhealthy.
  Dols speculates that the frequent recurrences may have consistently undercut natural population growth in Syria–Palestine, the center of the Umayyad Caliphate, and weakened Umayyad power. Concurrently, Arab tribal migrations into the far eastern province of Khurasan, which was apparently spared from the plague epidemics, may have led to the lopsided growth and predominance of the eastern half of the Caliphate and the rise of the Abbasid Movement there, which ultimately toppled the Umayyads in 750. In the view of Conrad, by the end of these plague cycles, the Umayyads has lost practical control of the eastern Caliphate and "it is tempting to view the interminable plagues of the last years of the dynasty as an important factor in the victory of the Abbasid revolution".
caption: The gate of Rusafa, the desert palace which served as Caliph Hisham's preferred residence in times of plague. The Umayyad caliphs routinely withdrew from Syria's cities to their Syrian desert palaces during recurrences of the plague epidemic.
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