The historical earthquakes of Syria: an analysis of large and moderate earthquakes from 1365 B.C. to 1900 A.D.

Abstract

The historical sources of large and moderate earthquakes, earthquake catalogues and monographs exist in many depositories in Syria and European centers. They have been studied, and the detailed review and analysis resulted in a catalogue with 181 historical earthquakes from 1365 B.C. to 1900 A.D. Numerous original documents in Arabic, Latin, Byzantine and Assyrian allowed us to identify seismic events not mentioned in previous works. In particular, detailed descriptions of damage in Arabic sources provided quantitative information necessary to re-evaluate past seismic events. These large earthquakes (I0>VIII) caused considerable damage in cities, towns and villages located along the northern section of the Dead Sea fault system. Fewer large events also occurred along the Palmyra, Ar-Rassafeh and the Euphrates faults in Eastern Syria. Descriptions in original sources document foreshocks, aftershocks, fault ruptures, liquefaction, landslides, tsunamis, fires and other damages. We present here an updated historical catalogue of 181 historical earthquakes distributed in 4 categories regarding the originality and other considerations, we also present a table of the parametric catalogue of 36 historical earthquakes (table I) and a table of the complete list of all historical earthquakes (181 events) with the affected locality names and parameters of information quality and completeness (table II) using methods already applied in other regions (Italy, England, Iran, Russia) with a completeness test using EMS-92. This test suggests that the catalogue is relatively complete for magnitudes >6.5. This catalogue may contribute to a comprehensive and unified parametric earthquake catalogue and to a realistic assessment of seismic hazards in Syria and surrounding regions.

The Great 1822 Aleppo Earthquake: New historical sources and strong ground motion simulation

“…The earthquake of 13 August 1822 did not only affect the aforementioned cities, towns and villages, it also damaged numerous towns and cities in northwestern Syria and its neighboring areas in central-southern Turkey. This damage is well-documented by Ambraseys (1989) and Sbeinati et al (2005). Figure 8 shows almost all cities, towns and villages affected by the event based on the last two works and our study.…”

“…In this paper, thirteen new contemporary and near-contemporary sources of information cited partly or not cited in the works of Ambraseys (1989) and Sbeinati et al (2005) are presented. These new sources, listed in Table 2, enabled us to describe in more details the seismic damage in Aleppo, Antakia and Latakia, and to identify new affected localities.…”

“…As shown in Figure 3, the earthquake activity for ≥ 4.0 (mb) is mainly distributed along EAF, the extension of AMF at sea, and along the Karataş-Osmaniye fault (KOF). Although the instrumental seismicity reveals only small to moderate earthquakes, the region has been the site of numerous large historical earthquakes that damaged Aleppo, Antakia, Latakia and other towns, like the 10 October 1138, 29 December 1408, 26 April 1796, 13 August 1822 and 3 April 1872 (Ambraseys, 1989;Ambraseys, 2004;Guidoboni et al, 2004;Sbeinati et al 2005). Consequently, this may indicate that the current seismic activity may be going through relative quiescence, compared with the historical earthquakes (Abdul-Wahed and Asfahani, 2018).…”

“…Numerous well-documented, large historical earthquakes have occurred in northwestern Syria, that originated in the Dead Sea fault system (DSFS) (e.g. Sbeinati et al, 2005). Among those past events is the earthquake of 13 August 1822, which occurred in northwestern Syria and the neighboring provinces in central-southern Turkey.…”

“…Al-Ghunaim (2002), in his historical descriptive catalogue on earthquakes in the Arab countries, provided all Arabic accounts of the 1822 earthquake without giving his own interpretation for this earthquake. The last catalogue that listed this event is the historical parametric one compiled by Sbeinati et al (2005) that presented damage in 29 localities, based on the work of Ambraseys (1989), the famous Aleppian historian Mohammad Ragheb Al-Tabbakh (Al-Tabbakh, 1925: 400-410), and the letter of the French consul in Aleppo Monsieur "Mathieu-Maximilien-Prosper de Lesseps-(1771Lesseps-( -1832, dated on September 1822 (Archives des Affaires Étrangères, 1822, 176-181). Ambraseys is the first to provide an extensive description of the earthquake of 57 localities affected by this earthquake in Syria, Turkey, Cyprus and Lebanon, based on the numerous consular archives, contemporary accounts, and press reports (Ambraseys, 1989;2009).…”