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 157

Fig. 1 Simplified filiation scheme of sources and studies available for the main north-west Africa
earthquakes
is likely to be more complete within some time windows than within others. This
is well illustrated by the earthquake catalogue for Libya from classical antiquity to
the present by Suleiman et al. (2004), which lists several earthquakes in the 19th
and 20th centuries, but almost none for the 704 AD to 1803 time window. Similarly,
the Harbi et al. (2005) catalogue for North Algeria, from 1359 AD to 1895, lists 14
earthquakes through the whole of the 14th-17th century, 21 in the 18th century and
90 in the 19th century.
The present study focuses on a very short time window in the seismicity of north-
west Africa: the second half of the 17th century AD; very few earthquakes are listed
within this time window by the current catalogues and the only evidence available
on them is of European origin. Our aim is to retrieve, cross-check and critically
analyse the original historical sources quoted by previous compilations and studies
in connection with these earthquakes. Through this approach, we hope to contribute
to a better understanding of the historical seismicity of the Mediterranean basin.
2 The Earthquakes Studied and Their Historical Evidence
Table 1 lists the earthquakes that we have set out to investigate, indicating their dates
of occurrence and their presumed epicentre locations, and the general descriptions
and evidence quoted by the seismological studies that made first mention of them.