–devastates Europe 1346 CE – 1353 CE.
Bubonic plague pandemic originated in Central Asia and swept across Asia, Europe and Africa.
The plague possibly reduced the population of the just–noted land mass from 450 million to 360 million, with local density–of–population and hygiene deficiencies directly impacting infection.
Some Jewish historians assert that built–in hygiene codes and mores in Judaism lowered the infection rates—but that these lower infection rates then aggravated suspicion that the Jews were complicitous. Many thousands, possibly tens of thousands, of Jews were killed in the associated plague–related pogroms against them across Europe.
That same year, the Black Plague hits Jerusalem.