For centuries, the dominant narrative of the Black Death’s spread has followed a familiar arc: a sudden outbreak in China, a lightning-fast westward path through Asia, and its explosive arrival in Europe by 1347. The idea that plague traveled overland across 5,000 kilometers in under a decade has been accepted as near-historical fact.

A new academic study published in the Journal of Arabic and Islamic Studies now challenges the foundation of that timeline. The researchers reveal that a key source underpinning the “Quick Transit Theory” was never meant to be a historical document—it was a work of fiction.

For centuries, scholars have misinterpreted a 14th-century Arabic maqāma—a stylized prose narrative by Syrian writer Ibn al-Wardī—as a factual eyewitness account of the pandemic’s early spread. This misreading shaped pandemic historiography, influenced scientific models, and helped embed an idea that may never have reflected reality.

The Literary Myth Behind a Scientific Model

The now-questioned narrative stems from Risālat al-nabaʾ ʿan al-wabāʾ, a 14th-century text written in the maqāma genre—a highly stylized form of Arabic literature combining rhymed prose, allegory, and fiction. According to the study, Ibn al-Wardī’s maqāma is one of several written during the 1348–1349 plague outbreaks in the Mamluk world, designed to capture the psychological and moral dimensions of mass mortality.

Its content, however, has been repeatedly cited—by both medieval historians and modern scholars—as a factual timeline. This misreading led to what researchers call a “fallacious narrative” of plague transmission, painting an image of a pathogen tearing through China, India, Persia, and the Middle East with near-mechanical precision.

An accessible breakdown of the findings, highlights how literary metaphor came to be treated as a geographic itinerary. The so-called “rapid spread” model was not supported by contemporary evidence—it was inspired by literary tropes.

One Fictional Text, Global Consequences

The misreading of Ibn al-Wardī’s maqāma led to the widespread acceptance of the “Quick Transit Theory,” which holds that Yersinia pestis, the bacterium responsible for the plague, spread from Central Asia’s Lake Issyk Kul to the Black Sea in under 10 years.

This idea has heavily influenced even recent genomic studies tracing the pathogen’s origins. While phylogenetic research has confirmed a Central Asian source, it assumed the overland transmission was swift—an assumption directly tied to misinterpreted literary evidence.

The new study notes that Ibn al-Wardī was not alone. Two other maqāmas—by al-Ṣafadī and al-Maqrīzī—used similar stylistic devices, portraying the plague as a wandering force or visitor. These texts, created at the peak of the pandemic, were meant to express fear, disruption, and divine judgment, not map real-world transmission.

Over time, however, Arab and later European chroniclers absorbed these maqāmas as historical data. Their literary structure was lost in translation—literally and figuratively—leading to a centuries-long misunderstanding that blurred allegory with reportage.

What This Changes—And What It Doesn’t

The findings don’t erase the immense toll of the Black Death, which killed between 30% and 50% of Europe’s population by the early 1350s. Nor do they challenge the core conclusion that plague reached Europe from Asia. But they do force a rethinking of its tempo and trajectory.

More importantly, the study reframes these maqāmas as cultural artifacts: valuable not for their geography, but for what they reveal about medieval coping mechanisms. These texts reflect how communities processed grief, horror, and collective trauma through narrative and metaphor. In this sense, they are closer to the psychological accounts of pandemics than to epidemiological tracking.

“They reveal how artistic creativity could constitute an adaptation strategy,” the Techno-Science report notes, highlighting parallels between the literary response to the Black Death and more modern pandemic-era behaviors—including fictionalization, denial, and symbolic framing.