1759 CE Safed and Baalbek Earthquakes
Safed was among the towns most heavily affected during the earlier 30 October shock of the 1759 earthquake sequence.
Contemporary reports describe the town as “completely ruined and overthrown,” with thousands of casualties, while the surrounding countryside was
said to be comparatively less affected, suggesting highly localized destruction. These accounts indicate that the damage in Safed was severe
and concentrated within the built environment, with landslides likely contributing to the devastation on the steep slopes surrounding the town,
compounding the structural collapse and loss of life. According to a
Letter from the French Consulate in Saida, “Safed and Nablus have been completely ruined and overthrown,” while
Boutros Jalfaq reported “Safad, 2000 dead, but the surrounding countryside is unscathed.”
Other contemporary observers similarly emphasized the scale of destruction and loss of life within the town.
Writing from Aleppo,
Patrick Russell stated that Safed was “totally destroyed, together with the greater part of the inhabitants.”
La Gazette de France reported that the earthquake overthrew Safed.
Katz and Crouvi (2007:65) report that "the core city was severely
damaged" in the earthquakes of 1759 CE "with about 150 fatalities, most
of them in the earlier shock (Schiller, 2002; Ya'ari,
1943)". They further report that "the majority of the damage occurred in the
downhill (western) parts of the core city,
apparently due to landslides (Yizrael, 2002a)". They added that
"the synagogues of the Sefaradic Ari and Banea that were damaged in the 1759
earthquake (probably the first) mark the upper landslide
boundary, while the more eastern ones, the
Greek pilgrimage and Hagadol (the big) synagogues,
were not damaged (Yizrael, 2002a)."
Fig. 2b - The core (historical) city area. The core city extended from the Citadel, westwards to the old cemetery (α). Sites of field-observed slope instability are marked by black arrows. Also shown are upslope limits of EILS (Earthquake Induced Landslides) area in the 1759 and 1837 earthquakes (β and γ, respectively) according to reported damage to synagogues -marked by close squares where