The Plague of Emmaus also known as the Plague of Amwas, was an outbreak of plague, possibly bubonic plague

Bubonic plague

Plague is a deadly infectious disease that is caused by the enterobacteria Yersinia pestis, named after the French-Swiss bacteriologist Alexandre Yersin. Primarily carried by rodents and spread to humans via fleas, the disease is notorious throughout history, due to the unrivaled scale of death...

, that occurred in 639

639

Year 639 was a common year starting on Friday of the Julian calendar. The denomination 639 for this year has been used since the early medieval period, when the Anno Domini calendar era became the prevalent method in Europe for naming years.- Europe :* Clovis II succeeds Dagobert I as king of the...

 AD

Anno Domini

and Before Christ are designations used to label or number years used with the Julian and Gregorian calendars....

 in the town of Emmaus

Emmaus

Emmaus was an ancient town located approximately northwest of present day Jerusalem...

 (Amwas

Imwas

Imwas was a Palestinian Arab village located southeast of the city of Ramla and from Jerusalem in the Latrun salient of the West Bank. Often identified with the biblical Emmaus, over the course of two millennia, Imwas was intermittently inhabited and was ruled by the Romans , Arab caliphates,...

) in Palestine

Palestine

Palestine is a conventional name, among others, used to describe the geographic region between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River, and various adjoining lands....

. The town had been re-founded as Nicopolis

Emmaus Nicopolis

Emmaus Nicopolis was the Roman name for a city associated with the Emmaus of the New Testament, where Jesus is said to have appeared after his death and resurrection. In the modern age, the site was the location of the Palestinian Arab village of Imwas, near the Latrun junction, between Jerusalem...

 in 221 AD by the Roman Emperor Elagabalus

Elagabalus

Elagabalus , also known as Heliogabalus, was Roman Emperor from 218 to 222. A member of the Severan Dynasty, he was Syrian on his mother's side, the son of Julia Soaemias and Sextus Varius Marcellus. Early in his youth he served as a priest of the god El-Gabal at his hometown, Emesa...

, and was given the title of 'city'. Shortly after its conquest by the forces of the Rashidun Caliphate

Rashidun Caliphate

The Rashidun Caliphate , comprising the first four caliphs in Islam's history, was founded after Muhammad's death in 632, Year 10 A.H.. At its height, the Caliphate extended from the Arabian Peninsula, to the Levant, Caucasus and North Africa in the west, to the Iranian highlands and Central Asia...

, who set up a military camp there, the plague struck.

The epidemic

Epidemic

In epidemiology, an epidemic , occurs when new cases of a certain disease, in a given human population, and during a given period, substantially exceed what is expected based on recent experience...

 is famous in Muslim

Muslim

A Muslim, also spelled Moslem, is an adherent of Islam, a monotheistic, Abrahamic religion based on the Quran, which Muslims consider the verbatim word of God as revealed to prophet Muhammad. "Muslim" is the Arabic term for "submitter" .Muslims believe that God is one and incomparable...

 sources because of the death of many prominent companions of Muhammad

Muhammad

Muhammad |ligature]] at U+FDF4 ;Arabic pronunciation varies regionally; the first vowel ranges from ~~; the second and the last vowel: ~~~. There are dialects which have no stress. In Egypt, it is pronounced not in religious contexts...

. It is estimated that 25,000 people died in this outbreak, which is considered part of the outbreaks of plague in the 6th, 7th and 8th centuries that followed the major pandemic of the 6th century, the Plague of Justinian

Plague of Justinian

The Plague of Justinian was a pandemic that afflicted the Eastern Roman Empire , including its capital Constantinople, in 541–542 AD. It was one of the greatest plagues in history. The most commonly accepted cause of the pandemic is bubonic plague, which later became infamous for either causing or...

.

Sources

• Dols, Michael W. "Plague in Early Islamic History". Journal of the American Oriental Society, Vol. 94, No. 3 (Jul-Sep, 1974), pp. 371-383.