Ever since the emergence of Islam, earthquakes have been considered, first as the result of divine will, and then, under the influence of Greek sciences, as the effect of a profane physical mechanism. In the first case, since created nature is the work of the Creator, it is not difficult to imagine that he uses it as an instrument, but for what purpose ? The earthquake thus appears to have several meanings : it foretells, accompanies or warns of an event of universal significance, but it also punishes moral faults. In practice, the medieval Muslim imagination views this divine intervention through two distinct cosmologies, each of them being syncretic since they bring together earlier mythical elements, such as Mount Qāf on the one hand, and the angel, the bull and the whale on the other. As for the “mechanistic” perspective, it employs the Aristotelian theory of terrestrial exhalations to justify the shaking of the ground in specific places, in an interplay of thrust and resistance driven by heat.