Trace the Black Death 1346-1353 CE as an EURASIAN pandemic emerging from Yersinia pestis along Mongol-era Pax Mongolica trade routes — refusing the Eurocentric 'European plague' framing in favor of Egypt + Syria + Maghreb + Persia + China named as equal-victims per Monica H. Green 2014 scholarship
Exercise Difficulty 5 ~20 min hist.g7.f.ex_43

Source Card Analysis

MG-7 Diagram
MG-7 SEVEN-QUESTION SOURCE CARD — primary instructional scaffold for ALL source analysis in the unit. 8.5x11 inch double

MG-7 SEVEN-QUESTION SOURCE CARD — primary instructional scaffold for ALL source analysis in the unit. 8.5x11 inch double-sided laminated card. Front: Seven questions with sentence-frame scaffolds. (1) WHO created this source? (Wineburg sourcing) (2) WHEN was it created and where? (Wineburg contextualization) (3) WHY was it created and for whom? (Wineburg sourcing — purpose + audience) (4) WHAT does it say + show + leave out? (Wineburg close reading) (5) WHAT do OTHER sources say? (Wineburg corroboration) (6) WHOSE living descendants connect to this source today? (NMAI 5th — present-tense protocol) (7) WHOSE GOLDEN AGE does this source name — and whose golden age does it occlude? (NEW G7-Fall 7th — Banks Level-3 transformative move; refuses single-narrative golden-age framing). Back: scaffolded sentence frames for each question.

Prompt

Apply MG-7 Q1-7 to BOTH Boccaccio Decameron 1353 preface (Florence plague) + ibn al-Khatib 1348-9 'A Convincing Discourse on the Pestilence' (Granada plague treatise refuting Galenic miasma-only in favor of contagion). Argue: ibn al-Khatib practiced proto-epidemiology 500 years before germ theory.

How it's presented
mode text
Answer criteria
type structured response rubric
rubric
Q1-7 applied to both sources (28 pts); ibn al-Khatib's proto-epidemiology argument with empirical-observation evidence (isolated communities like mountain shepherds + jailed prisoners + nuns escaped plague; those who associated with sick contracted it) (15 pts); refusal of 'Islamic-world ignored science' Orientalist framing (10 pts). Total 53 pts.
Hints
  1. ibn al-Khatib's empirical-observation method is the proto-epidemiological signature.
  2. Refuses 'Islamic-world ignored science' Orientalism.
Misconceptions to watch
  • Stopping at Boccaccio alone
  • Missing the proto-epidemiology argument
Used in lessons