Note 378 — BOOK VII THE MONGOL EMPIRES OF THE LAND WAYS AND THE NEW EMPIRES OF THE SEA WAYS
Reading edition
Dr. C. O. Stallybrass says that this plague reached China thirty or forty years after its first appearance in Europe. Ibn Batuta, the Arab traveller, who was in China from 1342 to 1346, first met with it on his return to Damascus. The Black Death is the human form of a disease endemic among the jerboas and other small rodents in the districts round the head of the Caspian Sea.