الزلازل التاريخية في منطقة انهدام البحر الميت

Abstract EN

The Dead Sea rift forms a major continental plate boundary that separates the Arabian plate and the Sinai-PaleStine subplate.

It links the Red Sea spreading in the south to a complex plate convergence within the Anatolian domain in the north with a NNE general trend and 1100 km total length.

Geological and geophysical evidences indicate cumulative multi-stage left-lateral shear of about 107 km along this transform fault.

Three sources of information on the seismicity of the study region are available.

These include geological investigations of earthquake deformations preserved in the deposits of the Dead Sea.

The second source comprises historical seismicity data, of which the most reliable are those that date back to about 2000 years.

Instrumental seismicity data represent the third source.

The historical seismicity shows a good correlation with the general tectonics of the study region.

All tectonic elements of the study region are active in the present and of considerable seismic hazard.

This study reviewed the available historical information in Books Heritage, Arab literature, where historical earthquakes are mentioned, and cited the previous published studies in this field, in order to develop and revise a recent Arabic index documenting the historical earthquakes of the Dead Sea rift region during the past two thousands years.

It is found that around a hundred destructive historical earthquakes occurred along the Dead Sea rift during the last twenty centuries.

The sources indicate that, the earthquakes led to casualties, significant damage and loss in property, and damaging of buildings, charges, mosques and archeological sites located in the villages, towns that are distributed along the rift region.

Therefore, this requires us to follow all possible techniques and methods to mitigate the danger of possible earthquakes in the region.