## 1 Introduction  
The causes that led to the destruction and abandonment of many archaeological sites are still subject of intense debate, especially when dealing with medieval or antiquity sites. Since the emergence of archaeoseismology, earthquakes are playing a heading role to explain the decadence, abandonment and destruction of many ancient sites around the Mediterranean Sea [1, 2, 3]. The present study deals with the premature abandonment and destruction of Medina Azahara, Capital of the Umayyad Caliphate of Cordoba (Andalusia, Spain) between the late 10 th and the early 11 th centuries. Medina Azahara, under the protection of the Andalusian Government, is included in the UNESCO World Heritage List since 2018 constituting one of the most important architectural masterpieces of the Al Andalus in the Iberian Peninsula.  
The Caliphal city was founded between the years 935-941 CE, being the court of [PERSON] and its successor [PERSON] till the years 975-977 CE [4; 5]. After this time, the Andalusi military leader [PERSON] took the power acting as the regent of the Caliphate [6]. A subsequent tumultuous period of upheavals and power struggles ended in a civil war (_fitna_) between the years 1009-1031 CE [4] and the final collapse of the Umayyad Caliphate in Al-Andalus. Along all this period, the luxury caliphal city was only active during around 40-45 years being abruptly abandoned soon after the death of [PERSON]. The sudden abandonment and decline of Medina Azahara are still under debate among the archaeological community since any ancient chronicle describes the city destruction or its subsequent plundering [4].  
Interestingly, during the second half of the 10 th century, there is a well-documented seismic period across the whole Al-Andalus, but especially around Cordoba [7; 8; 9; 10]. In fact, this seismic period is the first historically documented one in the Iberian Peninsula by almost contemporary written chronicles. Recent revisions of historical seismic catalogues in Spain show that these earthquakes are well grounded by Arabic historians who gave accurate dates with the year, month, day and even the hour of the catalogued events [10; 11; 12]. This seismic period extends from the year 944 CE till 974 CE, overlapping the lifetime of the studied caliphal site (Appendix A), suddenly abandoned in the year 975 CE [5]. Other destructive, strong earthquakes occurred in the zone soon after this period in the years 986-987 CE (\(\geq\)VII MSK), 1024-125 CE (VIII-IX MSK) and 1169-1070 CE (IX-X MSK), could have contributed to the late ruin and destruction of the already abandoned site (see Appendix A; Figure 1). All these earthquakes are listed in the exiting on-line seismic catalogues of the Spanish Geological Survey [13], Instituto Andaluz de Geofisica [14] and the Instituto Geografico Nacional [15]. Consequently, the occurrence of earthquake damage cannot be ruled out at all as a triggering factor (among others) of the sudden abandonment, destruction and late ruin of the caliphal city. In this work, we present the analysis of 163 earthquake archaeological effects (EAEs) surveyed within the site to check the probable seismic origin of the observed deformations by means of the study of oriented damage.