Theophanes described two
earthquakes that occurred about three years apart and a third
earthquake around 756/757 CE, treated separately as the
By No Means Mild Quake. The year he
assigned to the first of the two earlier earthquakes (the Holy Desert
Quake) conflicts with archaeoseismic evidence from Bet She’an, which
provides a
terminus post quem of
749 CE for that event, which struck the Jordan Valley and the Sea of Galilee.
To avoid chronological confusion, these earthquakes are referred to by
name rather than date.
The Holy Desert Earthquake is said to have struck first at 10 a.m. on
18 January, though this time and date more likely refer to when the
subsequent Talking Mule Quake occurred. The Holy Desert Quake was
described as
a great earthquake in Palestine, by the Jordan and in
all of Syria
where
numberless multitudes perished
and
churches and monasteries collapsed, especially those in the desert of the Holy City [Jerusalem]
.
The Talking Mule Quake is said to have struck Syria in the same year
(
A.M.a
6241, 25 Mar 748 – 24 Mar 749 CE) that
Leo the Khazar was born to
Constantine V. Theophanes reports
that
some cities were entirely destroyed, others partially so,
while others slid down entire, with their walls and houses, from
positions on mountains to low-lying plains, a distance of six miles or
thereabout
. The sliding village likely reflects an embellished
account of a translational landslide, technically described as a
block slide. Theophanes adds that
eyewitnesses
affirmed that the ground in Mesopotamia was split along two miles and
that out of the chasm was thrown up a different soil, very white and
sandy, in the midst of which there came up an animal like a mule,
quite spotless, that spoke in a human voice and announced the incursion
of a certain nation from the desert against the Arabs, which indeed
came to pass
. Despite the fantastical appearance of an oracular
Talking Mule —
which
became a very popular part of the story — the accompanying
details of an earth fissure and sand boils remain seismically credible.