A great earthquake leveled the Beqaa Valley near Lebanon and Syria
On this day · 25 November 1759
On November 25, 1759, a magnitude-7.4 shock tore along a fault in the Beqaa Valley, flattening villages and toppling the ancient columns of Baalbek.
On November 25, 1759, a powerful earthquake estimated at magnitude 7.4 struck the Beqaa Valley of present-day Lebanon, the larger of two great shocks to hit the Levant that autumn. Surface ruptures ran for roughly 100 kilometers along a fault threading the valley, and contemporary accounts describe nearly every village between Lebanon’s two mountain ranges thrown down.
The blow reached far. Damage was reported in Damascus, Beirut, Tripoli, Tyre, and Acre, and the shaking was felt as far as Egypt. At the Roman ruins of Baalbek, several towering columns of the temples of Jupiter and Bacchus collapsed — some of which still lie where they fell.
Estimates of the dead range widely, but as many as 20,000 people may have perished in the Beqaa alone.
Modern seismologists rank the 1759 events among the strongest earthquakes ever documented in the eastern Mediterranean, a sobering marker of the region’s seismic hazard.
Sources & references
2 referencesWell-established. Corroborated by 2 independent sources.
