1755 Lisbon earthquake a benevolent deity. The Lisbon disaster provided a counterexample. As Theodor Adorno wrote, "[t]he earthquake of Lisbon sufficed to cure Voltaire of the theodicy of Leibniz" ("Negative Dialectics" 361). In the later twentieth century, the 1755 earthquake has sometimes been compared to the Holocaust as a catastrophe that transformed European culture and philosophy. Jean-Jacques Rousseau was also influenced by the devastation following the earthquake, whose severity he believed was due to too many people living within the close quarters of the city. Rousseau used the earthquake as an argument against cities as part of his desire for a more naturalistic
893 Ardabil earthquake "mistaken" earthquake, derived from misreadings of the original Armenian writings about the 893 earthquake in Dvin, Armenia; the Arabic name for Dvin is "Dabil". At about midnight on 28 December 893, the night after a lunar eclipse, Dvin, then the capital of Armenia, was devastated by an earthquake. Most buildings were destroyed, and at least 30,000 people died. This event was recorded by contemporary Armenian and Arabic chroniclers, including Ibn al-Jawzi. However, the Arabic name for the city is "Dabil", and this led the 14th-century writer Ibn Kathir to place the earthquake in Ardabil in Azerbaijan. Ibn Kathir was then