Earthquakes recorded at Ramla

This lesson asks you to identify the major areas of tectonic activity by plotting recorded earthquakes and active volcanoes on a map, and to tell the areas apart by type of activity. The museum holds only two historical earthquake records, both at Ramla. It cannot give you the world map, the volcanoes or the classification into boundary types; your class brings those. The records give no magnitude, depth or dates in the modern calendar, and dating them to a Gregorian year is for your class. ¹

Find each place the records name on a modern map. Note which damage reports name a place and which do not, and how sure a point on your map can be.

Decide what you would have to add, from your class's data, before a pattern of tectonic activity could appear, and what the museum's two records can and cannot show on their own.

Read one scene in the great earthquake of Ramla. In Jumada I of the year 460 AH an earthquake struck the land of Palestine and destroyed the town of Ramla ². Some merchants wrote about this earthquake that the whole of Ramla sank into the ground; during the quake the sea receded so far that its bed was uncovered and people walked on it, and then it returned to its former state ². In the record of 425 AH, Ramla was shaken and about half of it was destroyed, villages sank into the ground, part of the wall of Jerusalem fell, and the minaret of the mosque of Ascalon collapsed ³. The sea receded about three leagues, and people went out to gather fish and shells; then the water came back and carried off some of them ³.

Neither report reaches us through an instrument. Each comes through a history book. The record of 460 AH rests on al-Muntazam of Ibn al-Jawzi: its first sentence says the earthquake destroyed the town of Ramla, and the next reports that some merchants wrote that the whole of Ramla sank ². The record of 425 AH rests on Shadharat al-Dhahab of Ibn al-Imad al-Hanbali, and says about half of Ramla was destroyed ³. "The whole of Ramla" and "about half of it" do not say the same thing; they describe different years and come through different books. Note what neither record gives: a size or a depth for the earthquake.

The record of 460 AH reports that some merchants wrote that the whole of Ramla sank; the record of 425 AH says about half of it was destroyed. They concern different years, so the two reports do not contradict each other. Choose which report you would plot with more confidence on a map of tectonic activity and give your reason, then answer the strongest objection to your choice: is a detailed report not more trustworthy than a brief one?

• The great earthquake of Ramla: what the merchants wrote, and what the record says of the sea and the mosque.
• Earthquake at Ramla and the sea's recession, 425: the black wind at Nisibin, the earthquake and the sea's withdrawal.
• Ramla: the city your map is placed on, how it was founded and how al-Muqaddasi described it.

Read the earthquake of 460 AH and the earthquake of 425 AH. On a blank map, mark every place they name and write beside each the damage the record reports.