May 26, 881 Tsunami: Cadiz, Spain

881 June 10, Cadiz. 36 N, 8 W. Sea retreat in South Spain. Event reliability 0 (very improbable)(reference #4139)

881 Golfo de Cadiz. 36 N, 8 W. Tsunami generated (reference #1193)

881 June 10 South Spain. 36 N, 8 W. Event reliability = 3 (probable tsunami). The date is uncertain. Arab sources pose the event in the year 266 or 267 of the Hegira converted to year 880 and to year 881. Other authors quote the date 811. Hernandez Pacheco (1900), quoting the manuscript by the arab Ben Alathir included in the history book by Jose Antonio Conde (Historia de la dominacion de los Arabes en Espana), reports that after the earthquake the sea retreated from the usual limits. (reference #11164)

Sanchez Navarro-Neumann (1917, 1921) gives the date 10 of June and quotes the history of Jose Antonio Conde y Garcia based on Spanish-Arabic authors (Conde y Garcia, 1820, vol. 1, cap. 55, p. 251): "[...] The sea withdrew from the coast and islands and reefs disappeared [...]" (reference #12774)

A wealth of information of Arabic authors exists about a large earthquake that took place on the 26th of May 881 (the first earthquake in the Iberian peninsula for which the exact date is known) and probably corresponds to the area of the Saint Vincent Cape [...] Mention of the earthquake is also found in the work y Ibn Abi Zar, a Moroccan author of the fourteenth century. The text refers to large damage in the Maghreb and Andalucia, but nothing is said about any phenomenon in the sea. However, the historian Jose Antonio Conde (1820), based on other Spanish-Arabic texts (no explicit references given), writes about large damage in the south and west coast of Spain and that the sea first retired from the coast and afterwards islands and reefs disappeared in the sea. [...] The earthquake is listed by Moreira (1758) and all subsequent catalogues. On this information it could have been a large earthquake in the area of Saint Vincent Cape followed by a tsunami. (reference #12772)

881 June 10, Cadiz. 36 N, 8 W. Event reliability 0 (very improbable). (reference #12955)

After verifying the documentary sources and resorting to the most reliable translations of the Rawd al-Qirtas, the earthquake can be date to the 22nd day of the moon of Xarwal (Shawwal) in the year 267 of the Hegira, according to the established formulas for converting AH to AD, a date of May 26th, AD 881 is derived [...] For May 26th this would correspond to a time close to 21:30 [...] The precise origin of the earthquake that caused the tsunami is not yet fully understood, although there are at least two plausible possibilities. The first is that it originated from a tectonic event in the Betic Cordillera, which, directly or indirectly, triggered an underwater landslide leading to a tsunami. The other option is an underwater earthquake caused by one of the nearby Mediterranean faults, halfway between Africa and the Iberian Peninsula. (reference #13092)