A great and fearsome earthquake occurred in the celebrated city of Ferrara in Italy. The earth shook from its place, and the motion went back and forth - sometimes from east to west and sometimes from south to north - as if intending to destroy everything. The whole city quaked, towers fell, and the walls of houses were breached until all the people abandoned their possessions and fled from the city lest the houses fall upon them, as happened to some who could not escape quickly and their houses became their graves in an instant.

Some fled twenty miles. The earthquake extended around the city about ten miles, but the sensation of the earthquake without destruction extended from the edge of the city of Pisara to Milano, a distance of two hundred Italian miles. This was in the year 5331. See Sefer Ma'aseh at its introduction, and you will find wondrous things about earthquakes [(Tzedah LaDerech, Part 2).

See Yuchsin, Article 5, Time 9, year 4152 (I don't know which number, so I wrote it here next to a matter like it). There were great earthquakes, and all the surroundings of Sha'an and Chalev and Tripoli and Antioch and Hama and Laodikia sank into the earth. In Hama there were fifty Ishmaelite youths in the school, and the building fell upon them, and no one came to inquire about his son, so it appeared that also their fathers were killed, end of quotation].