Notes from Triantafyllou et al. (2022:13)
4.5 AD 1 May 1312 or 1212: Sinai seismic sequence
In Part Γ of Epitome there is a chapter titled “About the great earthquakes that happened
in the same Monastery”. Then, the earthquakes and the significant damage caused are nar
rated as follows: “On Monday [AD] 30 April of 1312 at sunset a small earthquake hap
pened, and another one at midnight; at dawn of Tuesday 1 May another great and terrible
earthquake occurred; and because of the rumble and the shaking of the Mountains and of
the rocks throwing down from the Mountains, it looked like that the entire World would
submerge. The northern and eastern walls as well as two towers of the Monastery pulled
down; and some of the cells collapsed completely but in others only the roofs collapsed.
The earthquakes did not finish, on the contrary they were coming one after the other. Then,
the Monks got in fear and with cries and lamentations left to the wine-arbor, where the
Cemetery is situated, for they were afraid of the complete ruination of the Monastery, since
the walls were so much damaged as it was possible for a loaded animal to pass through”.
From Nektarios’ narration we also learn that six days after the earthquake a group of seven
Christian builders arrived and repaired the Monastery walls and towers “in the situation
they can be found today”. The builders happened to arrive there for another reason, i.e., to
renovate the Church at the Holly Summit of the Mountain since it suffered damage from
past earthquakes. However, no further information is provided for those earthquakes.
The earthquake activity of AD 1312 is a puzzling episode from the dating point of view.
Ben-Menahem (1979), based only “upon private communication with Dr D. Neev, Israel
Geological Survey”, listed an earthquake event that occurred either in AD 1312 or AD
1608, but without quoting relevant documentary source(s). Amiran et al. (1994) just copied
Ben-Menahem (1979). The earthquake catalogues by Poirier and Taher (1980), Guidoboni
and Comastri (2005) and Ambraseys (2009) do not list an earthquake on 1 May 1312.
However, Guidoboni and Comastri (2005), who did not include Epitome in their sources,
report on an earthquake that occurred in the Gulf of Aqaba on 1 May 1212 and caused
significant damage in Eilat and as far as Cairo. However, the sources used by Guidoboni
and Comastri (2005) did not mention the Sinai Monastery as one of the places damaged
by the earthquake. Muslim sources used by Ambraseys (2009) dated the AD 1212 earth
quake on 2 May. Ambraseys (2009), however, was based on an earlier version of Epitome
and supported that Nektarios gives the date as AD 1312 or AD 1212, which is not correct
since Nektarios gives only AD 1312. By considering the days mentioned by Nektarios, i.e.,
Monday for 30 April and Tuesday for 1 May, we found that they correspond to the year AD
1212. This implies that Nektarios was writing 1312 instead of 1212, which likely is the
correct date of the earthquake given that for AD 1212 the 30th April was Monday.
It is noteworthy that Kagan et al. (2011) correlated historical records of large earth
quakes with dates of seismites sedimentary layers deposited at the Ein Feshkha Nature
Reserve outcrop located at the northern part of the Dead Sea basin. One of the seismites
was dated around AD 1312 and correlated with several candidate earthquakes, all having
occurred to the north of the basin with the exception of the AD 1312 one, for the histori
cal documentation of which Kagan et al. (2011) quoted Amiran et al. (1994). However, the
southward diminishing abundance of seismites may reflect the observation that the historic
earthquakes from the 12th and 14th centuries, including the ΑD 1312 one, ruptured north
of the Jordan Valley (Agnon 2014). Τhis observation removes the Sinai AD 1312 earth
quake from the list of candidate earthquakes.
It is noticeable that according to Tsolakidis (2001) an earthquake dated on 1 May
1201 is reported to have caused damage in St. Catherine’s Monastery, which look like the
damage caused by the AD 1212 or 1312 earthquake: “The memory of this event comes from
the Sinai Codex 1097, and it is said that it happened on [AD] 1201 when many cells and
towers were perished”. Although we do not rule out that an earthquake in fact damaged the
Monastery in 1201, one possibility is that the 1201 earthquake was mentioned with errone
ous date in the calendars of Orthodox Church events. An alternative is the erroneous read
ing of AD 1212 in the Sinai Codex 1097 or by Tsolakidis (2001).
Summarizing, what we learn from Epitome is that at the sunset and again at midnight of
AD 30 April 1212, Monday, foreshocks were felt in the Sinai Monastery. At the dawn of
AD 1 May 1212, Tuesday, a very strong main shock occurred. The earth shaking was pow
erful enough and caused rock falls from the Mountain. The Monastery building was seri
ously damaged given that the walls at the eastern and northern sides collapsed. The same
happened in two of the Monastery’s towers. Moreover, some cells collapsed in total, while
in others only the roofs fell. Many aftershocks followed the next days. The Monastery was
repaired by a team of builders who happened to arrive there six days later.
