In his work Description of Syria including Palestine, the native Jerusalemite al-Maqdisi wrote that earthquakes — in the plural — caused the collapse of the main structure of the Al Aqsa Mosque, sparing only the mihrab, during the time of the Abbasids, whose rule began on 25 January 750 CE. The Caliph of the day financed the rebuilding by ordering each governor to construct one of the colonnades. The reference to the Abbasid period therefore dates this earthquake to sometime after 25 January 750 CE.