Unlike Europe, Egypt suffered lasting effects from the plague of 1347, and the disease came back periodically (no less than fifteen major outbreaks occurred between 1360 and 1500). The early fifteenth century, under Faraj ibn Barqūq’s reign (1399–1412), was once again marked by famine (1403–1404), plague (1406), political unrest within the country, and external threats, both from the Ottomans and from Tamerlane’s armies, which reached Damascus in 1401. Upper Egypt was in the hands of Arab or Berber rebels. Throughout the country, agricultural land was abandoned, and “the yield of the iqta‘ revenue assignments was lastingly compromised” (Garcin 1995b: 360). The country’s population was just over 4 million inhabitants (Martinez-Gros 2009: 639). A monetary and economic crisis then struck Egypt and Syria, whose trade balance was once again negative. Silver dirhams came to be issued only intermittently, and copper fulus and dirhams were now in use.