the Plague of Justinian

The Plague of Justinian (AD 541–542) was a pandemic that afflicted the Eastern Roman Empire (Byzantine Empire), including its capital Constantinople. It has been claimed as one of the greatest plagues in history. The most commonly accepted cause of the pandemic has been bubonic plague, but recent research suggests that if it was bubonic plague it was of a sort unrelated to both present and medieval plague infections.^[2] The plague's social and cultural impact during the Justinian period has been compared to that of the Black Death. In the views of some 6th-century Western historians, the plague epidemic was nearly worldwide in scope, striking central and south Asia; North Africa and Arabia;^{[citation needed]} and Europe all the way to Denmark and Ireland. Genetic studies point to China as having been the primary source of the contagion.^[1]

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/the Plague of Justinian