(3)
In the year 1450 (AD 1139), in First Tifrin (October), a sign, something red, was seen in the sky in the north.
In the same month, a tremor took place and destroyed the towers of Bizacah. In Aleppo, the winter was very severe from
the beginning First Kantin (December) until S that (February). The Euphrates turned into ice and people began to cross on
it by foot. Animals and birds of the steppe and domestic entirely perished. In the steppe, near Callinicum,
while forty men were taking a road, the earth split and swallowed them, except for one who strayed to urinate [626].
The bellowing of the men and their horses was coming up for a long time.
Also Tarib
592 was also overturned in this tremor and the Church of Harim collapsed. The village of Azrab,
which is on the border of the Mountain of Cyrus, was split in the middle, and when its inhabitants left it, it collapsed in its entirety.
Lack of rain took place in this year until the middle of Iyyor (May), and then, when rain fell, the crop was late.
On Pentecost Sunday, a violent lightning took place and killed two women in Melitene, one on the roof and another in the middle of the market.
Also, two storks were killed in the ninth hour. In the night of the 22nd of Hziron (June), two red lances appeared in the northern side, shooting and moving toward the west.
In the year 1452 (AD 1141), in First Tirrin (October), on the 29th in it, a tremor took place, and on the 10th of it, an eclipse of the moon occurred.
Pestilence befell Melitene, first among the birds; the chicken perished, and after them the children died from chicken pox, I mean karyo.
593
In the month of Iyyor (May), in the feast of Mar-Barsawmo, violent hailstones fell [627] in Enzite and Hisn-Ziyad that broke trees and vineyard.
On that same day, lightning burned a boy and a mule. In Hziron (June) of the same year, violent wind blew and uprooted the rest of the trees.
In the region of Melitene, two towers in villages collapsed by the same wind. In the same month, a tremor occurred in the seashore.
In Cilicia, a small city called Kaling and many other places in that region, as well as on the entire seashore (collapsed).
Footnotes
592 Probably Atarib near Aleppo.
593 The translation "chicken pox" is based on the Arabic version: [Arabic text?] "in
the sickness of chicken pox;" Chabot, Michel, III, p. 251 n. 6. The following synonym is
unsecure; could it be a shortened form of Chicken pox in colloquial Arabic "kharyan," [Arabic text]?
Michael the Syrian
Michael the Syrian
