In his well-known work The Best Divisions in the Knowledge of the Regions, believed to have been written after Description of Syria including Palestine, native Jerusalemite al-Maqdisi recorded that in the days of the Abbasids, an earthquake occurred which threw down most of the main building [of the Al Aqsa Mosque], all, in fact, except the part around the mihrab.

The reference to the Abbasid period dates this event to after 25 January 750 CE. Because the destruction is described as nearly total — the entire mosque except for the mihrab — this likely refers to the second earthquake that struck the Al Aqsa Mosque after the Holy Desert Quake of 749 CE.

This passage is almost identical to al-Maqdisi’s account in Description of Syria including Palestine, except that in The Best Divisions in the Knowledge of the Regions he refers to a single earthquake, while in the earlier work he speaks of multiple earthquakes.