Qualla: 1762 Arakan Earthquake

1762 Arakan Earthquake: Introduction

Thu, 26 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The ground shook for four minutes. At about five in the afternoon on 2 April 1762, a rupture somewhere along the coast between Chittagong and the Arakan shore released one of the most powerful earthquakes in South Asian history. Estimated between magnitude 8.5 and 8.8, the quake was so violent that it permanently sank roughly 60 square miles of coastline beneath the sea near Chittagong, triggered a tsunami in the Bay of Bengal, and -- in what may be its most lasting legacy -- shifted the entire course of the Brahmaputra River 150 kilometers to the west. Two and a half centuries later, that river still flows along the path the earthquake chose for it.

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1762 Arakan Earthquake: Where Continents Collide

Thu, 26 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The 1762 earthquake was born from one of the planet's most complex tectonic boundaries. Eastern Bangladesh and southwestern Myanmar sit along the oblique convergent zone where the Indian plate grinds northward into the Eurasian plate. Unlike a simple head-on collision, the motion...

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1762 Arakan Earthquake: Four Minutes of Destruction

Thu, 26 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

In Chittagong, the shaking lasted approximately four minutes -- an eternity for an earthquake. The exact epicenter remains uncertain; researchers have placed it anywhere from near Chittagong to along the Arakan coast of modern Myanmar. The rupture may have extended hundreds of ki...

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1762 Arakan Earthquake: The Sea Rushes In

Thu, 26 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The earthquake triggered a tsunami in the Bay of Bengal. It was a local event -- no effects were recorded on the bay's western shores in India -- but along the coastline nearest the rupture, the ocean surged inland across land that was simultaneously sinking. Near Chittagong, app...

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1762 Arakan Earthquake: A River Finds a New Path

Thu, 26 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Perhaps the earthquake's most extraordinary consequence was its effect on the Brahmaputra, one of Asia's great rivers. Before 1762, the Brahmaputra flowed east of Dhaka along what is now called the Old Brahmaputra River. The earthquake's tectonic disruption -- the uplift, subside...

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1762 Arakan Earthquake: A Warning Written in the Landscape

Thu, 26 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The 1762 Arakan earthquake matters today because the tectonic forces that produced it have not gone away. The Indian plate continues its northward push at roughly 50 millimeters per year. Stress accumulates along the same faults and plate boundaries that ruptured in 1762. Modern ...

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