Al-Muwaffaq ʿAbd al-Laṭīf said: Eggs disappeared altogether; when one was to be had, a single egg sold for one dirham, a young rooster for one hundred, and a bowl of madīdah for a whole dinar. During twenty-two months the burial office (ḥushariyya) entered under its pen one hundred and eleven thousand dead—give or take a little—yet that is scant beside the numbers who perished in Egypt and the great cities, and all of that is but a trifle compared with the losses suffered throughout the province at large.
Reliable men from Alexandria told us that on one Friday the imām performed the funeral prayer over seven hundred biers. He then proceeded to recount several tales of people eating human flesh.

A full-blown earthquake followed; its shaking was like the rattling of a sieve in the middle of the night. He said: It has been firmly established for me that the tremor was felt from Qūṣ to Syria. Many lands were laid waste and nations beyond number perished, with yet greater havoc in Frankish territory. We heard that it reached Khilāṭ as well. A letter arrived from Syria stating: “Because of it the earth almost walked, the mountains heaved and rocked, and we thought it none other than the earthquake of the Last Hour. It came in two shocks: the first about an hour or a little more, the second shorter but more violent.” Another letter said: “It lasted no longer than the recitation of Sūrat al-Kahf, and in Ṣafad only the governor’s son survived….”

I say: This letter contains talk of lands being swallowed up and outright fabrication, for it claims that ʿIrqa and Ṣāfīthā sank into the earth.

Abū Shāmah (1) said: “In Shaʿbān an earthquake struck that encompassed the whole world in a single moment. It demolished Nablus, burying thirty thousand beneath the rubble, and it destroyed Acre, Tyre, and all the fortresses of the coast.”

I respond: This is a patent exaggeration.

He added: “Part of the eastern minaret was repaired, as were most of the Klāsah, the bīmāristān, and the greater part of …”