Ottoman Egypt: The Icelandic Connection

In 1783, the Laki volcanic fissure erupted in Iceland. The ash it produced led to cold summers across Europe, the Mediterranean, the Americas, and parts of Central Asia. This presentation considers the impacts of the explosion on Ottoman Egypt and uses this history of Iceland and Egypt to analyze ways of doing global environmental history.

Alan Mikhail is Professor of History at Yale University. He is the author of The Animal in Ottoman Egypt (2014) andNature and Empire in Ottoman Egypt: An Environmental History (2011) and editor of Water on Sand: Environmental Histories of the Middle East and North Africa (2013).