What were the effects of the Black Death in the Muslim world?

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SHORT ANSWER

The Black Death had a similarly devastating effect on the Muslim world as it did in Europe. Although we are less sure of the mortality rate compared to Europe, it was probably a little lower.

The short-term effects described by contemporary and near-contemporary sources speak of labour shortages, unharvested crops, declining morals, a fear of social and even religious gatherings, and a breakdown or serious decline in infrastructure, local economies and international trade.

The long-term effects are more difficult to gauge, not least because the plague reappeared several times in many regions. Generally speaking, though, the masses were less well-off. New powers, such as the Ottomans and the Safavids did emerge, but these cannot be attributed solely (or perhaps even minimally) to the plague.

DETAILED ANSWER

As with Europe, any estimate of the numbers who died involves much guesswork - in fact, even more so in the Muslim world:

If the much better European records are an indication, perhaps 50 to 60 percent of people in the affected areas died. Cairo, Islam’s largest city, lost a reported 300 per day in early October 1348 and 3,000 per day a month later, for a total estimated at 200,000 dead of an initial population of perhaps 500,000.

Source: Joseph P. Byrne, Encyclopedia of the Black Death

Byrne also notes that:

Civil and religious authorities famously did little if anything to prevent spread of the disease, though Muslim charity would have seen that victims were well cared for individually or in the bimaristans.

Although this view was certainly not held by everyone in the Muslim world, one Islamic scholar of the time from Syria, Muhammad al-Manbiji, said that

Prayer for lifting the epidemic is abhorrent because plague is a blessing from God; at least, a Muslim should devoutly accept the divine act.

Original source: Michael Dols, The Black death in the Middle East

Citing a number of sources, including John Kelly's The Great Mortality (2012), Sean Martin's The Black Death (2011) and Diane Zahler's book, also entitled The Black Death (2009), the website Materia Islamica states:

North Africa and Western Asia are...believed to have had a mortality rate of some 33%...However, records from Asia have not been studied extensively by historians, and the numbers remain speculative.17 Additionally, North Africa and Western Asia may also have had a lesser death toll overall when compared to Europeans, although reasons for this are not entirely clear.17 Other estimates range from between 25%—50% of the population between 1347 to 1351 alone.

The social and economic impact was, as in Europe, enormous. The Muslim historian Ibn Khaldun (1332 - 1406) lived through the plague but lost his parents. He wrote (originally cited in Robert Gottfried's Black Death):

Civilization both in the East and the West was visited by a destructive plague which devastated nations and caused populations to vanish. It swallowed up many of the good things of civilization and wiped them out. It overtook the dynasties at the time of their senility, when they had reached the limit of their duration. It lessened their power and curtailed their influence. It weakened their authority. Their situation approached the point of annihilation and dissolution. Civilization decreased with the decrease of mankind. Cities and buildings were laid waste, roads and way signs were obliterated, settlements and mansions became empty, and dynasties and tribes grew weak. The entire inhabited world changed. The East, it seems, was similarly visited, though in accordance with and in proportion to [the East's more affluent] civilization.

Another Muslim historian who wrote about the plague was Ahmad Ibn 'Ali al-Maqrizi. His account, in A History of the Ayyubids and Mamluks, was written 60 or 70 years after the event but he knew Ibn Khaldun and likely had access to sources since lost. This is worth quoting at some length as it leaves the reader in no doubt as to the devastation wrought by the plague 1349. The source of this translation is John Aberth, The Black Death: The Great Mortality of 1348-1350 - A Brief History with Documents

On the immediate impact of deaths:

By January 21, Cairo had become an abandoned desert, and one did not see anyone walking along the streets...Debris piled up in the streets...Everywhere one heard lamentations, and one could not pass by any house without being overwhelmed by the howling. Cadavers formed a heap on the public highway, funeral processions were so many that they could not file past without bumping into each other,...