The 1481 Rhodes earthquake occurred at 3:00 in the morning on 3 May. It triggered a small

tsunami A tsunami ( ; from , ) is a series of waves in a water body caused by the displacement of a large volume of water, generally in an ocean or a large lake. Earthquakes, volcanic eruptions and underwater explosions (including detonations, ...

, which caused local flooding. There were an estimated 30,000 fatalities. It was the largest of a series of

earthquake An earthquakealso called a quake, tremor, or tembloris the shaking of the Earth's surface resulting from a sudden release of energy in the lithosphere that creates seismic waves. Earthquakes can range in intensity, from those so weak they ...

s that affected

Rhodes Rhodes (; ) is the largest of the Dodecanese islands of Greece and is their historical capital; it is the List of islands in the Mediterranean#By area, ninth largest island in the Mediterranean Sea. Administratively, the island forms a separ ...

, starting on 15 March 1481, continuing until January 1482.

Tectonic setting

The island of Rhodes lies on part of the boundary between the

Aegean Sea The Aegean Sea is an elongated embayment of the Mediterranean Sea between Europe and Asia. It is located between the Balkans and Anatolia, and covers an area of some . In the north, the Aegean is connected to the Marmara Sea, which in turn con ...

and African plates. The tectonic setting is complex, with a

Neogene The Neogene ( ,) is a geologic period and system that spans 20.45 million years from the end of the Paleogene Period million years ago ( Mya) to the beginning of the present Quaternary Period million years ago. It is the second period of th ...

history that includes periods of

thrusting Thrust is a reaction force described quantitatively by Newton's third law. When a system expels or accelerates mass in one direction, the accelerated mass will cause a force of equal magnitude but opposite direction to be applied to that syst ...

extension Extension, extend or extended may refer to: Mathematics Logic or set theory * Axiom of extensionality * Extensible cardinal * Extension (model theory) * Extension (proof theory) * Extension (predicate logic), the set of tuples of values that ...

and strike slip. It sits in what is known as the Hellenic arc, which is in an area that is highly vulnerable to seismic activity, and historically always has been, dating back to the 226 BC Rhodes earthquake. Currently the island of Rhodes is undergoing a counter-clockwise rotation (17° ±5° in the last 800,000 years) associated with the south Aegean sinistral

strike-slip In geology, a fault is a planar fracture or discontinuity in a volume of rock across which there has been significant displacement as a result of rock-mass movements. Large faults within Earth's crust result from the action of plate tectonic ...

fault system. The island had also been tilted to the northwest during the

Pleistocene The Pleistocene ( ; referred to colloquially as the ''ice age, Ice Age'') is the geological epoch (geology), epoch that lasted from to 11,700 years ago, spanning the Earth's most recent period of repeated glaciations. Before a change was fin ...

, an uplift attributed to a

reverse fault In geology, a fault is a planar fracture or discontinuity in a volume of rock across which there has been significant displacement as a result of rock-mass movements. Large faults within Earth's crust result from the action of plate tectonic f ...

lying just to the east of Rhodes.

Damage

Sources refer to destruction in Rhodes Town; the Palace of the Grand Master of the Knights of Rhodes was sufficiently damaged to require immediate rebuilding (Rhodes was at the time under siege by the Turks). The damage caused by the earthquakes led to a wave of rebuilding after 1481. Damage from the tsunami was said to be greater than from the earthquake. The tsunami caused a large ship to break free from its moorings. It (or another ship) later sank with loss of all its crew after running onto a reef. There were an estimated 30,000 fatalities. Reports of an earthquake felt an hour past noon on the seventeenth day of

Muharram Al-Muharram () is the first month of the Islamic calendar. It is one of the four sacred months of the year when warfare is banned. It precedes the month of Safar. The tenth of Muharram is known as Ashura, an important day of commemoration in ...

in Egypt may have been the effects of this earthquake. Shaking in Cairo was described as "severe", and minarets were observed swaying. A cresting on the Salihiyya Madrasa collapsed, killing two people. Reports of shaking also came from

Fustat Fustat (), also Fostat, was the first capital of Egypt under Muslim rule, though it has been integrated into Cairo. It was built adjacent to what is now known as Old Cairo by the Rashidun Muslim general 'Amr ibn al-'As immediately after the Mus ...

Alexandria Alexandria ( ; ) is the List of cities and towns in Egypt#Largest cities, second largest city in Egypt and the List of coastal settlements of the Mediterranean Sea, largest city on the Mediterranean coast. It lies at the western edge of the Nile ...

and

Asia Minor Anatolia (), also known as Asia Minor, is a peninsula in West Asia that makes up the majority of the land area of Turkey. It is the westernmost protrusion of Asia and is geographically bounded by the Mediterranean Sea to the south, the Aegean ...

Characteristics

Tsunami

The tsunami appears to have been relatively minor, estimated at a maximum 1.8 m. However, it was observed on the

Levant The Levant ( ) is the subregion that borders the Eastern Mediterranean, Eastern Mediterranean sea to the west, and forms the core of West Asia and the political term, Middle East, ''Middle East''. In its narrowest sense, which is in use toda ...

ine coasts and a tsunami sediment layer found at Dalaman, on the southwest coast of Turkey. Although the studies on

sediment transport Sediment transport is the movement of solid particles (sediment), typically due to a combination of gravity acting on the sediment, and the movement of the fluid in which the sediment is entrained. Sediment transport occurs in natural systems wh ...

from tsunamis are limited, it is probable that the tsunami can be dated 1473 ± 46. The sediment found and studied appears to be consistent with the aforementioned tsunami.

Earthquake

There was a major

foreshock A foreshock is an earthquake that occurs before a larger seismic eventthe mainshockand is related to it in both time and space. The designation of an earthquake as ''foreshock'', ''mainshock'' or aftershock is only possible after the full sequenc ...

on 15 March of that year. Following the mainshock on 3 May, earthquakes (presumably

aftershock In seismology, an aftershock is a smaller earthquake that follows a larger earthquake, in Epicenter, the same area of the Mainshock, main shock, caused as the displaced Crust (geology), crust adjusts to the effects of the main shock. Large earthq ...

s) continued until January 1482, with large aftershocks on 5 May 12 May, 3 October and 18 December. The estimated magnitude for the mainshock is 7.1 on the

surface-wave magnitude The surface wave magnitude (M_s) scale is one of the magnitude scales used in seismology to describe the size of an earthquake. It is based on measurements of Rayleigh surface waves that travel along the uppermost layers of the Earth. This mag ...

scale. The maximum seismic intensity was estimated at IX–X, while intensity VII was observed in Cairo.

References

{{Earthquakes in Greece 15th-century earthquakes Earthquakes in Greece Rhodes earthquake Rhodes under the Knights Hospitaller Medieval Rhodes Tsunamis in Greece