In the mid-eighth century CE, Jerusalem was struck by a violent earthquake that devastated parts of the city and damaged the al-Aqsa Mosque on the southern edge of the Haram al-Sharif. Muslim historians writing over the following centuries preserved accounts of this disaster and of a second earthquakes and repairs that reshaped the early mosque.

According to the earliest surviving description, written around 985 CE by the Jerusalemite al‑Maqdisi, “earthquakes threw down most of the main building” of al-Aqsa, leaving standing only the portion surrounding the mihrab. The reigning Abbasid caliph, upon hearing of the destruction, is said to have found the treasury insufficient for a full reconstruction. He therefore ordered the governors of the provinces to each contribute by erecting a colonnade. The rebuilt structure, completed under these instructions, stood “firmer though less elegant” than the original. Although al-Maqdisī’s account preserves valuable architectural and administrative information, a synthesis of all surviving sources shows that parts of his chronology and archaeoseismic description are inaccurate or disputed. The earthquake appears to have taken place under Umayyad, not Abbasid, rule, and later authors restrict the damage to the eastern and western walls of the al-Aqṣā Mosque rather than to the entire structure, while also describing a different source of funding for the repairs.

A later historian, al-Dhahabī, recorded that this first earthquake occurred in A.H. 130 (747–748 CE) and described it as the most violent ever felt in Jerusalem, killing many residents—including members of the prominent Aws family —and toppling the house of Shaddād ibn Aws . In his account, the Caliph al-Manṣūr (r. 754–775 CE) subsequently organized repairs using gold and silver stripped from the mosque’s ornate doors to fund the reconstruction.

Yet this repair was short-lived. Both Jamal ad Din Aḥmad and Mujīr al-Dīn explain that a second earthquake struck not long after the first, bringing down the new structure built by al-Manṣūr. The third Abbasid caliph, al-Mahdī (r. 775–785 CE), then ordered a complete rebuilding of al-Aqsa, instructing that it be made broader and shorter than before to better serve worshippers.

Mujir al‑Din, writing in Jerusalem in 1495 CE, preserved three different isnād-based traditions about this earthquake. His narrators describe a nighttime earthquake accompanied by wind, rain, and terror: “the dome lifted itself up so that the stars were visible in the sky, and then it settled again.” In one version, witnesses heard unseen voices commanding, “Lift it up gently, in the name of God,” and later, “Put it down, put it in place.” Although written seven centuries later, such details suggest that Mujīr al-Dīn’s accounts preserve traces of early oral history, transmitted within the genre of Jerusalem praise literature (Williams, 2024).

Modern synthesis of these sources (Williams, 2024) suggests that the first earthquake corresponds to the first of the Sabbatical Year Quakes of January 749 CE (A.H. 131). This shock likely caused the initial destruction of al-Aqsa and much of Jerusalem. A later tremor—perhaps part of the same regional sequence or a By No Means Mild earthquake series reported in 756 CE—may explain the second collapse that led to al-Mahdī’s rebuilding.