The name of the 1138 Aleppo earthquake,…
October 1138 CE
The name of the 1138 Aleppo earthquake, one of the deadliest earthquakes in history, is taken from the northern Syria city that sustains the most casualties.
Aleppo is located along the northern part of the Dead Sea Transform system of geologic faults, which is a plate boundary separating the Arabian plate from the African plate.
The earthquake is the beginning of the first of two intense sequences of earthquakes in the region: October 1138 to June 1139 and a much more intense and a later series from September 1156 to May 1159.
The first sequence affects areas around Aleppo and the western part of the region of Edessa (modern Şanlıurfa, Turkey).
During the second an area encompassing northwestern Syria, northern Lebanon and the region of Antioch (modern Antakya, in southern Turkey) will be subject to devastating quakes.
Northern Syria in the mid-twelfth century is a war-ravaged land.
The Crusader states set up by Western Europeans, such as the Principality of Antioch, are in a state of constant armed conflict with the Muslim states of Northern Syria and al-Jazira, principally Aleppo and Mosul.
The quake occurs on October 11, 1138 and is preceded by a smaller quake on the tenth.
It is frequently listed as the third deadliest earthquake in history, following on from the Shensi and Tangshan earthquakes in China.
However, the figure of two hundred and thirty thousand dead is based on a historical conflation of this earthquake with earthquakes in November 1137 on the Jazira plain and the large seismic event of September 30, 1139 in the Transcaucasian city of Ganja.
The first mention of a death toll of two hundred and thirty thousand is by Ibn Taghribirdi in the fifteenth century.
The residents of Aleppo, a large city of several tens of thousands during this period, had been warned by the foreshocks and fled to the countryside before the main quake.
The walls of the citadel collapse, as do the walls east and west of the citadel.
The citadel also collapses, killing six hundred of the castle guard, though the governor and some servants survive, and flee to Mosul.
Numerous houses are destroyed, with the stones used in their construction falling in streets.
Contemporary accounts of the damage simply state that Aleppo was destroyed, though comparison of reports indicate that it did not bear the worst of the quake.
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