Jihad of the Germs?

Or medieval biological warfare by Muslims against the West they relentlessly attacked and tried to conquer for over a solid millennium, from the 7th to the 17th century.

I have independently come across an interesting filament of data indicating that the "Black Death" -- the Great (i.e., horrific) Plague that plagued Europe during the High Middle Ages/Renaissance -- may have been brought to the West via ships from the Muslim world.

From Edmund G. Gardner’s study on Saint Catherine of Siena, p. 3:

In the year after Catherine’s birth, 1348, the great Pestilence, brought, it was said, in two Genoese galleys from the East, swept over Italy, Provence, France, and Spain, and in the following year spread to England and the rest of Europe.

If so, was that just an accident arising out of the sparse trade going on between some Italian merchants and Muslims (in a general climate of hostility between Muslims and Europe), or was it an early form of biological warfare — biological jihad?

Now there’s a graduate thesis for some enterprising Millennial to get to work on in some Western college somewhere (if their ex-Hippie or Muslim professors and college counselors and politically correct peer presssue will allow them)!

P.S.:

The map below indicates that this viral scythe wielded a wide geopolitical swath, extending into the East.  Even Wikipedia notes that most believe a provenance of central Asia.  We need more study of this to find out if it was not, in fact, one of many attempts by the Islamic Caliphate to bring down the West.  It is salutary, if not stunning, to contemplate how the West, after suffering the ravages of this horrific disease for decades, maintained their defense of the heartland, and not too long after, began a recovery so spectacular, they were well on their way to being able to colonize most of the Muslim world.