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847 Damascus earthquake

Earthquake affecting Syria and Lebanon

Field	Value
title	847 Damascus earthquake
pre-1900	yes
local-date
map2	{{Location map+	Syria
{{Location map~	Syria	lat	34.4	long=36.30	label=	position=right	marksize=40	label_size=100	mark=Bullseye1.png}}
{{Location map~	Syria	lat	33.51	long=36.29	label=Damascus	position=right	marksize=10	label_size=100	mark=}}
{{Location map~	Syria	lat	36.2	long=36.15	label=Antioch	position=right	marksize=10	label_size=100	mark=}}
{{Location map~	Syria	lat	36.34	long=43.13	label=Mosul→	position=left	marksize=10	label_size=100	mark=}}
relief	yes
width	250
caption	}}
fault	Yammouneh Fault
location
magnitude	7.3
intensity
countries affected	Bilad al-Sham, Abbasid Caliphate (modern Lebanon and Syria)
casualties	70,000

| pre-1900= yes | local-date =

The 847 Damascus earthquake occurred (probably on 24 November) in AD 847. Recent scholarship suggests that the earthquake was part of a multiple earthquake stretching from Damascus to the south, to Antioch in the north and to Mosul in the east. There were an estimated 20,000 casualties in Antioch according to the 13th-century historian and writer Al-Dhahabi, and 50,000 in Mosul. It is thought to be one of the most powerful earthquakes along the Dead Sea Transform.

The Dead Sea Transform fault and associated structures in Lebanon and southern Syria

Tectonic setting

The northern Levant lies across the Dead Sea Transform (DST), the mainly strike-slip boundary between the Arabian plate and the African plate. In Lebanon the DST has a SW-NE trend that has caused transpression and the formation of the Mount Lebanon range and the Anti-Lebanon range. The main fault strand is the Yammouneh Fault, which has been the location of several major earthquakes, such as the 1202 Syria earthquake and the Near East earthquakes of 1759. The 847 earthquake has also been linked to movement on this fault.

Other earthquakes in 847 A.D.

A number of other towns and cities in the Middle East also suffered major destruction in 847 A.D., probably on the same day (24 November). The earthquake in Antioch may have been the same one which destroyed much of Damascus, Syria on 24 November 847. The Damascus earthquake began around dawn, lasting until at least midday; part of the Umayyad (Great) Mosque was destroyed and its minaret fell down. Bridges and houses collapsed, and huge stones were displaced. Other towns near Damascus were destroyed including Darayya.{{cite book |access-date=29 January 2012}}

Similar records exist in the western Mediterranean too and Rome was hit by a heavy earthquake that year causing a landslide on the Capitoline Hill.

References

(June 2005). "The historical earthquakes of Syria: an analysis of large and moderate earthquakes from 1365 B.C. to 1900 A.D.". Annals of Geophysics.
(2009). "The long-term temporal behaviour of the seismicity of the Dead Sea Fault Zone and its implication for time-dependent seismic hazard assessments". Deutsches GeoForschungsZentrum GFZ.
Daëron, M.. (2005). "Sources of the large A.D. 1202 and 1759 Near East earthquakes". Geology.
Jaafar A.. (2008). "GPS Measurements of Present day crustal deformation within the Lebanese Restraining Bend along the Dead Sea Transform". MSc thesis.
"The 847 CE earthquake in central-southern Italy".

Info: Wikipedia Source

This article was imported from Wikipedia and is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Content has been adapted to SurfDoc format. Original contributors can be found on the article history page.

earthquakes-in-the-levant medieval-antioch medieval-damascus history-of-mosul 847 9th-century-earthquakes 840s-in-the-abbasid-caliphate earthquakes-in-syria earthquakes-in-the-abbasid-caliphate

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