Strong Earthquakes in North-Western Africa in the Second Half of the 17th Century, AD: A Critical Reappraisal of the Historical Evidence - Historical Seismology: Interdisciplinary Studies of Past and Recent Earthquakes - page 156

Strong Earthquakes in North-Western Africa
in the Second Half of the 17th Century, AD:
A Critical Reappraisal of the Historical
Evidence
R. Camassi, C. H. Caracciolo and V. Castelli
Abstract The recent seismological literature recorded three strong earthquakes in
Algeria, Libya and Tunisia between 1656 and 1694 AD. The historical evidence
for these derives from European sources only (gazettes, journalistic pamphlets, mis-
sionary literature). Considering the kind of sources involved, their likely biases and
the geographical distances that divided their places of production from the places
that they spoke about, it is possible that some of these accounts could be less than
reliable, and therefore have little use as materials from which to assess earthquake
parameters. To answer these doubts, we have retrieved, cross-checked and critically
analysed the original historical sources quoted in previous compilations and studies.
1 Introduction
The recent achievements of earthquake research in Maghreb countries are attested
by the reports of many scientific studies and the release of Maghreb-including haz-
ard maps on the part of GSHAP (Giardini, 1999). This shows that there is a growing
interest in hazard evaluation in these regions. Much of the available data deal with
the instrumental period of seismological recording only, although the historical seis-
micity of the Maghreb region has also been the object of painstaking studies. These
started with the groundbreaking research by the founding fathers of modern histor-
ical seismology (Ambraseys, 1984; Ambraseys and Vogt, 1988; Ambraseys et al.,
1994; Vogt, 2004), in whose footsteps did follow Benouar (1994; 2004), Mokrane
et al. (1994), Benouar and Laradi (1996), Hamdache (1998), Hamdache et al.
(1998), Oussadou (2002), Harbi et al. (2003; 2005), Suleiman et al. (2004) (Fig. 1).
The study of historical earthquakes is a constantly ongoing process, however,
because of the complexities of historical research and the interactions between his-
torians and seismologists. According to the trends of local historical research and the
completeness of the records available, any regional historical earthquake catalogue