The moan of the earth

Publish date 01-06-2023

by Claudio Monge

The earthquake in Turkey and Syria: many precedents, but also a great responsibility on man's part

In recent weeks, the groaning of the earth has also physically been that of thousands of people buried alive and never reached by rescuers, for a toll of confirmed dead, not yet definitive, of unimaginable proportions in ancient times, due to the diversity of buildings and for a different distribution

In recent history, the worst tremors in Turkey, seismic land par excellence, occurred along the northern Anatolian fault, which crosses the northern edge of the country and the Sea of Marmara, near Istanbul (a city that alone is far more populated than the ten southern provinces affected by the earthquakes of 6 February last). According to experts, this would be the first earthquake of magnitude greater than 7 degrees recorded along the border between the Arabian and Anatolian plates, since the surveys began at the beginning of the last century. The last earthquake of this size occurred in 1939 in Erzincan, more than 240km northeast of Monday's epicenter. But ancient history tells us something else, although the details are sometimes lost in the mists of time.

A certain Matteo, an Armenian monk who lived between the sec. XI and XII, and died in 1144 during the siege of Edessa (today Urfa) by the Turks, has transmitted to us a crude but interesting chronicle concerning the eastern regions, between the V and the XII century, which was published in French in the Recueil des historiens des croisades (I,1-3; 1869). From this precious testimony we can deduce that the lands of southern Turkey and Syria, home to some of the oldest civilizations of mankind, have a long history of earthquakes, dating back thousands of years, to the kingdoms of the Hittites and the cities- state of Mesopotamia. Already in 115 AD, an earthquake of magnitude 7.5, according to backdated estimates by geologists, devastated the ancient metropolis of Antioch (on which today's Antakya stands, devastated in the recent earthquake) and almost killed the Roman emperor Trajan, who he was wintering there after a military campaign. But returning to the chronicle of Matthew of Edessa, in 1114 a monstrous earthquake struck the areas of present-day southern Turkey and northern Syria.

The monk's story takes on apocalyptic colors to describe what befell the earth: «It sounded like the noise of a large army. For fear of the power of the Lord God, all creation shook and trembled like a rough sea - he writes -. All the plains and mountains rang like the tinkling of bronze, shook and moved and tossed like trees in a hurricane. Like a person who had been ill for a long time, all creation cried out and groaned as, with great fear, they awaited their destruction." The topicality of these words makes one shiver, beyond the connotations of the Christian theodicy of the time (the presumed direct involvement of God, whose omnipotence such a terrible event cannot escape), partly verifiable in that Islam today. In recent weeks, the groaning of the earth has also physically been that of thousands of people buried alive and never reached by rescuers, for a toll of confirmed dead, not yet definitive, of unimaginable proportions in ancient times, due to the diversity of buildings and for a different demographic distribution.

But tears, over time, do not change in intensity and bitterness. However, the apparent impotence of men in the post-modern era leads us to ask ourselves differently about the presumed ineluctability not so much of natural events as of their consequences. Greed and thirst for easy money, with an evident contempt for elementary rules in real estate planning, are however no less detestable than the indispensable political complicity, not to mention the cynical use, always political, of such catastrophes, in electoral perspective or, much more simply , in view of a now unexpected consolidation of a faltering power. Once the anger generated by desperation has subsided, it would not be good to all go back together to reflect on the need to put human life and its sacredness back at the center of our daily choices, at all levels of responsibility, from those that regulate family destinies to those of those to whom we entrust the fate of entire nations?

Claudio Monge

NP Marzo 2023

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