On January 18, 749 CE Umayyad Beisan came to an abrupt end when it was completely devastated by a mighty earthquake. A few scattered residential neighborhoods situated on the ruins, probably established by the survivors of the quake, are nothing more than a fleeting shadow of the city’s magnificent past. The city center moved to the southern hill where subsequently a Crusader fortress surrounded by a moat was constructed and in the Ottoman period there was a small village that constituted the seed for the founding of modern Bet Shean in the 1950’s. The essence of the magnificent city and evidence of its dramatic death have been preserved as an antiquities site awaiting the excavator’s shovel that would subsequently discover its secrets.