1983/07/01 by David Howells. · 1 voice
Earth and Planetary Sciences · #earthquake and tectonic studies
paper · pdf · doi:10.1002/eqe.4290110412
openalex publication_date 1983/07/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/04/20
This book is an account of a remarkable and valuable research carried out over the past 20 years.It has involved study of Arabic, Armenian, Greek, Persian, Turkish and Syriac sources as well as documents in English, French, German and Russian languages together with field visits to many parts of Persia where access was difficult.It is truly inter-disciplinary and includes a note on conversion from dates by the Seleucid, Armenian, Muslim 'hijra' and Persian 'shams?calendars to the Christian era as well as a valuable discussion of the many scales of magnitude which have developed during the past half-century.The first chapter tells how macroseismic data have been collected from the range of historical records which are available during the Caliphate period (622-1258), the Mongol and Turkoman period (1258-1598), the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the Qajar period (17941925) and the recent period since 1925.Chapter 2 deals with data from field studies.One of the important aims of the field studies was to locate the epicentres of earthquakes occurring during the early part of this century for comparison with early instrumental data.The authors comment that local types of dwellings are readily damaged or destroyed by earthquake.They note that in contrast with Anatolia, no traditional techniques for building against earthquake have developed.Chapter 3 contains descriptions of the effects of over 200 of the largest and most interesting earthquakes from 658 to 1979 with 57 maps showing regions affected by individual earthquakes.Most of these are to scales of 1 : 625,000 or 1 : 770,000.One needs a good physiograph-