Crusader castle torn apart by earthquake at dawn, 20 May 1202
By Ronnie Ellenblum, Shmuel Marco, Amotz Agnon, Thomas Rockwell and Adrian Boas
Geology, v. 26; no. 4 (1998)
Abstract: The Crusader castle of Vadum Jacob, an outpost overlooking the Jordan River, was deformed during a destructive earthquake triggered by motion along the Dead Sea Transform. The M > 7 earthquake occurred at dawn, 20 May 1202, and offset the castle walls by 1.6 m. This exceptional precision in dating and estimating displacement was achieved by combining accounts from primary historical sources, by excavating the Dead Sea Transform where it bisects the castle, and by dating faulted archaeological strata. The earthquakes of October 1759 and/or January 1837 may account for the remaining 0.5 m out of a total 2.1 m of offset. Our study exploits the potential embodied in interdisciplinary historical-archaeological-geological research and illustrates how detailed histories of seismogenic faults can be reconstructed.
Crusader castle torn apart by earthquake at dawn, 20 May 1202
By Ronnie Ellenblum, Shmuel Marco, Amotz Agnon, Thomas Rockwell and Adrian Boas
Geology, v. 26; no. 4 (1998)
Abstract: The Crusader castle of Vadum Jacob, an outpost overlooking the Jordan River, was deformed during a destructive earthquake triggered by motion along the Dead Sea Transform. The M > 7 earthquake occurred at dawn, 20 May 1202, and offset the castle walls by 1.6 m. This exceptional precision in dating and estimating displacement was achieved by combining accounts from primary historical sources, by excavating the Dead Sea Transform where it bisects the castle, and by dating faulted archaeological strata. The earthquakes of October 1759 and/or January 1837 may account for the remaining 0.5 m out of a total 2.1 m of offset. Our study exploits the potential embodied in interdisciplinary historical-archaeological-geological research and illustrates how detailed histories of seismogenic faults can be reconstructed.
Click here to read this article from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Click here to see the Vadum Jacob Research Project
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