Miscellaneous earthquake reports from various sources
If famine and epidemics were lethal events in the medieval Islamic world, earthquakes were at times also lethal and always terrifying phenomena. The damage and destruction were immediately apparent and, therefore, probably a much greater stressor. In 1293 there were severe earthquakes in Palestine at such places as al-Ramlah and al-Ludd. Fortifications in al-Karak were damaged, and three villages in the vicinity were destroyed.96 A terrible earthquake struck both Syria and Egypt in 1302-1303, destroying houses and killing many.97 In January of 1343 the town of al-Manbij in northwest Syria was ruined and 5,700 people killed there.98 Information on other severe earthquakes in Syria during this period can be gleaned from the pages of what is probably the definitive catalogue, the Paris dissertation of Mustapha Anwar Taher.99
96 Al-Jazari, Chronique, 83; al-Suyuti¸ "Soyuti's Work on Earthquakes, called Kashf al-Salsalah
‘an Wasf Az-Zalzalah, i.e., Removing the Noise from the Description of the Earthquakes ...," 748.
97 Ibn Habib, Durrat al-Aslak, Bibliothèque Nationale, MS arabe 1719, fol. 116b; Ibn al-Shihnah,
Rawdat al-Manazib, British Library MS, Or. Add. 23336, fol. 117a; al-Muqri, Nathr al-Juman,
Chester Beatty, MS 4113, fols. 65a-b.
98 J. P. Poirier, B. A. Romanowicz, and M. A. Taher, "Large Historical Earthquakes and Seismic Risk in Northwest Syria," Nature 285 (May, 1980), 219.
99 Mustapha A. Taher, "Corpus des textes arabes relatifs aux tremblements de terre de la conquête
arabe au xii H./xviii J.C.," Ph.D. diss., Sorbonne, 1979. See especially vol. 2 for Arabic texts.
Tucker, William (1999) Environmental Hazards, Natural Disasters, Economic Loss, and Mortality in Mamluk Syria
in Mamluk Studies Review, Vol. III
Vogt, Jean (1997) Sismicite historique du domaine ottoman: types de sources occidentales et exemples de temoignages
in Part One Earthquakes in ZACHARIADOU ELIZABETH (ed.) (1997). Natural Disasters in the Ottoman Empire Halcyon Days
in Crete III. A Symposium Held in Rethymnon, 10-12 January 1997, Rethymnon.