Historian examines social repercussions of 1927 earthquake

British historian Sarah Irving examined the societal repercussions of a 1927 catastrophic earthquake which hit Palestine, Jordan, southern Lebanon and Syria and the repercussions in the lecture “Knowing about earthquake in Mandatory Levant”, held on Tuesday at the CBRL Amman Institute in Jabal Luweibdeh.

Regarding the magnitude, a previous 1837 earthquake killed far more people that the one during the British Mandate in 1927, noted the scholar, who is a lecturer in International History at Staffordshire University.

“The focus was on political and colonial dynamics; it seemed that very little had been done on it, and also I was particularly interested as well in environmental history,” Irving said, adding that in terms of how ethnographic and cultural studies discuss earthquakes, fires and floods, the villagers would perceive them as “God’s wrath”.

Irving realised that news coverage, especially from the international media, was largely inaccurate. She also understood that memoirs describing the earthquake of 1927 were not correct, adding that if the memoirs were written a few years later, they often picked up some unrelated anecdotes and twisted the factual historical events.

“The epicentre of the 1927 earthquake was Jericho, and it affected Jerusalem, Nablus, Salt and Amman,” Irving said, noting that “there are two main tremors, and the epicentre was on the northwestern part of the Dead Sea, which is part of the big network of geological faults, known as the African Rift Valley”.

“The worst death toll was in Nablus, which suffered very seriously, and that was caused by the Ottoman style buildings, which include heavy stone work,” Irving underlined, adding that Jerusalem had similar architecture which badly affected the city.

People lived in tents for months after the disaster. Luckily, the fact the earthquake occurred in July actually alleviated any potential additional suffering for surviving families, she noted.

If the earthquake happened in the wintertime, she said, the death toll would be higher due to the harsher weather conditions. Irving added that Al Aqsa Mosque and the Church of the Holy Sepulchre suffered significant damage after the event as well. 

However, British authorities were not well organised in terms of responding to the crisis; the army distributed tents, but British authorities did not pay for the damage caused by the earthquake, Irving claimed, adding that it went on to become part of a complex British diplomatic policy.