The Land of Darkness
A land that Arabic geographers placed in the far north, beyond the lands of the Golden Horde, where Ibn al-Wardi was told the plague began fifteen years before 1348.
The Plague Goes Town by Town
Ibn al-Wardi, The Report of the Pestilence, from his chronicle (Aleppo, 1348) · 1348 (the essay); the chronicle entries 1346–1349
749
وفيها: في شهر رجب وصل الوباء إلى حلب كفانا الله شره، وهذا الوباء قيل لنا أنه ابتدأ من الظلمات من خمس عشرة سنة متقدمة على تاريخه وعملت فيه رسالة سميتها النبأ عن الوباء.
This year, in the month of Rajab, the pestilence reached Aleppo. May God spare us its evil! We were told that this pestilence began in the Land of Darkness fifteen years before this time. I wrote an essay about it, which I called The Report of the Pestilence.