January 18, 746 Tsunami: Syrian and Egyptian Coasts

Name: January 18, 746 Tsunami: Syrian and Egyptian Coasts
Start: 0746-01-18
Location: Syrian and Egyptian Coasts

January 18, 746 · Deaths: many · Probable tsunami

A tsunami caused by a magnitude 7 earthquake began at Syrian and Egyptian Coasts on January 18, 746. Its effects were recorded at 2 places in at least 2 countries.

Where the waves reached

The source (white) and every runup with a place, colored by the water height recorded there. A ring is a runup NCEI marks doubtful.

Under 1 m
1 to 3 m
3 to 10 m
10 to 30 m
30 m and more
Height not recorded

Tsunami warnings in force

Travel times

How long the first wave took to reach each part of the ocean, one line for each hour up to 24, estimated from the source and the depth of the sea.

The travel times are computed in your browser, which needs JavaScript.

1 to 4 hours
5 to 6 hours
7 to 14 hours
15 hours and more

Computed in your browser the way NOAA’s own travel time maps are: the wave travels at the square root of gravity times the depth, over NOAA’s ETOPO1 depths averaged to a 10 arc-minute grid. Checked against NOAA NCEI’s maps for 21 tsunamis over the first 24 hours, these lines fall within 10 minutes of NCEI’s at half the points compared and within 52 minutes at 9 in 10. They give when the first wave could arrive, not how high it is; bays, harbors and island chains finer than the grid can see it later. Not for use in a warning: see tsunami.gov.

The tsunami

Date: January 18, 746
Source: Syrian and Egyptian Coasts
Cause: Earthquake
Earthquake: Magnitude 7
Runups recorded: 2
Tsunami intensity (Soloviev-Imamura): 3
Waters: Ocean
How certain: Probable tsunami
Source location: 32.000° N, 35.500° E

The toll

Deaths: Many (about 101 to 1,000) with the earthquake or eruption that caused it
Damage: Limited (under about $1 million); Severe (about $5 to $25 million) with the earthquake or eruption that caused it

Where the literature gives no number, NCEI records a description on a scale of 1 to 4, printed here in its words. Damage is in millions of US dollars of the year of the event, not adjusted for inflation.

What the record says

NCEI’s account, from the sources it cites.

746. Possibly 743, 745, January 18th. Possible/Likely tsunami. Levantian Sea from Egypt to Syria. A destructive earthquake in Syria (reference #2130)

After an earthquake on AD 18 January 746 or 749, which affected Palestine, Jordan and Syria, the waves "rose up to the sky" and destroyed cities and villages. This is one of the historical events which certainly deserve further examination for better understanding the tsunami source. (reference 11391)

Michael talks also about the effects of an extraordinary storm at sea, as a result of which waves rose up (damaging waves in lakes, fjords and large reservoirs can be generated by submarine slumping of large masses of loose sediments triggered by an earthquake or by its aftershocks), flooding the land and destroying coastal towns and villages, including a fort in the region of Balqa, that is, in the Moab, a site probably somewhere near northeastern coast of the Dead Sea. The storm he clearly does not associate with the earthquake and this event may be as exotic as the damage caused in Constantinople and Nicae, which Michael inserts for the second time at the end of his narrative. (reference #9116)

A very large earthquake ruptured at the region of Palestine and caused destruction and several ground failures in a large area. One of the documentary sources says that an extreme storm occurred in the sea, with the waves rising up to the sky. The sea boiled like a cauldron in the fire and the waves surged with a horrible and terrifying noise. The boiling sea overflowed and destroyed most of the cities and villages along the coast. (reference 11868)

In the sea, too, there was an extraordinary storm, so that the waves rose up to the sky; and, just as a cauldron is made to boil by the flames of a fire, so the waves surged with a horrible and terrifying noise. The sea boiled and overflowed, and it destroyed most of the cities and villages along the coast. In the land of Balqa , that is to say, Moab , there was a fortress situated on the coast, inhabited by Yemenite Tayayes. When the flood of the sea struck, it was uprooted from its foundations and set down three miles away. (reference #9285)

it is not clear to which earthquake the tsunami was associated with […] is noteworthy, however, that in his earthquake accounts for that period, Theophanes does not make reference to an extraordinary storm in the sea or to similar phenomena […] We tentatively suggest that this [18 January 746] is the tsunamigenic earthquake described by the various sources examined earlier. (reference #13464)

18 January 746, 32.5 N 35.6 . Probable tsunami. (reference #11164, v.2)

18 January 747; 18 January 749, 18 January 743/745/746. Definite tsunami. Waves were observed in Lebanon and Egypt […] Moab fortress, then situated on the coast when the flood of the sea struck was uprooted from its foundations and set down 4500m away. (reference #9275)

Reference #10416 lists this event as low validity/reliability

Every runup

Nearest the source first. Heights are above sea level at the time; a tide gauge reads half the wave’s full height.

Where	Country	Km from source	Water height, m	Inland, m	Measured by	First wave, UTC	Deaths
Unnamed Location	Lebanon				Eyewitness observation of water height
Coast	Egypt				Eyewitness observation of water height

Every tsunami in 746 The 700s Tsunamis of Syria The earthquake This day in weather history Alerts in force

Sources

Tsunami events and runups from NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information, Global Historical Hazard Database, cited as NCEI/WDS, doi:10.7289/V5PN93H7. Public domain. Read 2026-09-24. NCEI tsunami event 59.