The crisis of the sixth century: climatic change, natural disasters and the plague

Abstract

The Byzantine period (fourth-sixth centuries) is considered an era of peak prosperity in agriculture and trade in the eastern and southern Mediterranean. Paleoclimatic studies have pointed to a significant increase in rainfall from the early fourth century onward, the beginning of a more humid period that lasted some two hundred years. However, the economic prosperity of the Byzantine Empire and its achievements in the fields of urban development and trade were halted in the mid-sixth century. In the second half of the sixth century and through the seventh century we can discern a sharp decline in both urban and rural settlement. The plague known as the "Justinianic plague" broke out in the summer of 541 and spread rapidly via trade ships throughout the Empire. At the same time the period of humid climate that had begun in the fourth century came to an end. For the Byzantine farmer the combination of plague and drought was disastrous. This paper focuses on the circumstances and implications of the severe crisis that affected the Levant during the sixth century.

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