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Indeed, the earliest seismological compilations that mentioned it (Hoff, 1840;
Perrey, 1850) proposed that it should be re-located as having been in the Tripoli
on the Lebanese coast.
2.2 The March 10, 1673, Algiers Earthquake
As evidence of the March 10, 1673, earthquake in Algiers, Ambraseys and Vogt
(1988) quote an 18th century French missionary report concerning a redemption
expedition undertaken by three Trinitarian Fathers to Algiers and Tunis in 1720 (the
Trinitarian and Mercedarians were “ransoming orders”, whose mission was buy-
ing back Christian slaves). This work was originally published in 1721 (Comelin
et al., 1721; the study quotes a later edition, Comelin et al., 1735), and is there-
fore almost 50 years later than the earthquake about which it provides evidence.
Indeed, the evidence in question is also rather roundabout, forming a part of a
description of a strong earthquake that affected Algiers in 1716 (the consequences
of which were still clearly visible in 1720). Thus Comelin et al. (1735) related
how in the aftermath of the 1716 earthquake, a member of the Turkish commu-
nity of Algiers was sentenced to death for having remarked, seditiously, that “40
years before” (i.e.
circa
1676) there had been another earthquake that had been fol-
lowed by a series of aftershocks as long as the current one, and that these had only
stopped after the murder of the Dey (Regent) of Algiers. As can be seen, this source
only indicates the occurrence of an earthquake around 1676. Ambraseys and Vogt
(1988) pinpoint its date to 1673 by taking into account evidence of a contemporary
journalistic pamphlet, which they were not able to retrieve, but the existence of
which they were indirectly aware of from its description (possibly extracted from
a Portuguese library catalogue) as a “Relacon em espanol dadata de 30 de maio de
1673, feita por un religioso
estragos que os tremores de terra ali fizeram” [Report
written in Spanish on May 30, 1673, by a cleric
...
...
on the damage caused by an
earthquake].
2.3 The May 25, 1685, Tripoli Earthquake
Suleiman et al. (2004) mention, although as a possibility only, an “unknown”
destructive earthquake that occurred in Tripoli (Libya) on May 25, 1685. Their
source was a contemporary journalistic pamphlet printed in Bologna (Italy). This
purporting to be based on a letter sent to a merchant living in the town of Ancona,
on the western coast of the Adriatic Sea (Tripoli, 1685b), the reference to which they
obtained from Minutilli (1903). Suleiman et al. (2004) also state that this account
“sounds emphatic, and verging on exaggeration”, but they defer to the opinion ex-
pressed by Bono (1982), according to whom this account “though unsupported by
other sources [and] extremely unlikely in parts, cannot be said to be completely
inauthentic”.
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