GNGTS 2024 - Atti del 42° Convegno Nazionale

Session 1.1 GNGTS 2024 «Se dice etam per teremot esser sommerso et ruinato tre terre» (How a large historical earthquake was born). V. Castelli 1 1 Isttuto Nazionale di Geofsica e Vulcanologia-Sezione di Bologna, Bologna/Ancona, Italy There was once a physician (called Andrea Alpago or Maestro Andrea da Belluno, from his NE Italy hometown) who went to work for the Venetan consulate in Damascus around 1487, stayed there up to 1517, learned Arabic and was the frst European ever to translate Avicenna’s works from the original (Levi della Vida, 1960). Thanks to his linguistc skills Maestro Andrea became an expert advisor on the politcal and commercial situaton of the entre East (from Egypt and Turkey to Arabia and India) and in partcular on the “Signor Sophi” or “Suf”, i.e. the Shah of Persia Ismā'īl, founder of the Safawid dynasty (1502-1524), whose alliance Venice was then seeking to obtain against the Turks. Between 1504 and 1514, Maestro Andrea sent to the Venetan government many confdental reports, that were copied by Marino Sanudo in his Diarii (De Bertoldi, 1888). In a report dated on 10 March 1514, Mastro Andrea, describes at length the doings of the new Turkish sovereign, Selim I “the Grim”, in Anatolia (he was liquidatng all his internal enemies – namely his stepbrothers and nephews - before startng a war against Egypt and Persia). The report ends, as an aferthought, with this piece of informaton: “Se dice etam per teremot esser sommerso e ruinato tre terre del Soltan a li confni del Turcho, videlicet Malathia et Terso et Adena”. Fig. 1 – Excerpt of the report writen Maestro Andrea on 10 March 1514, as transcribed in Venice by Marin Sanudo sometme in the second half of 1514 (Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana, Venice). This is the earliest, and only contemporary testmony of an earthquake about which very litle is known. It must have happened before the leter was writen, but was it in late 1513 or early 1514? It heavily damaged (as shown by the verbs “submerged” and “ruined”) at least three towns of SE Anatolia, but it seems curious that two of them - Tarsus and Adana - are close to each other, while