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The Black Death and Justinian’s Plague: History’s Worst Pestilences

Khalid Elhassan January 8, 2025 13 min

Plague - Illustration from the medieval Liber Chronicarum 1, depicting skeletons rising for the dance of death — Illustration from the medieval Liber Chronicarum 1, depicting skeletons rising for the dance of death. Live Science

14. Catapulting Infected Corpses

The Mongols catapulted plague-infected cadavers into besieged Caffa. Strategic Plan

When the Black Death struck the Mongol besiegers of Caffa, their commander, Jani Beg, decided to share the misery. So he catapulted corpses of plague victims over the walls into Caffa, to infect the inhabitants. Some Genoese traders in the city fled, and carried the plague with them to Mediterranean ports. They arrived in Sicily in 1347, which they infected, and from there, the Black Death spread north to the Italian mainland and thence rapidly to the rest of Europe. When the plague hit Europe and the Mediterranean, it spread as rapidly as, well as… well… the plague. The Genoese traders who had carried the pestilence with them when they fled from Caffa stopped in Constantinople along the way, and gifted it and the rump Byzantine Empire with the plague before they continued on to Sicily.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.