Descriptive Catalogues of Historical Earthquakes in the Eastern Mediterranean and the Middle East; Revisited - Historical Seismology: Interdisciplinary Studies of Past and Recent Earthquakes - page 28

although regrettably without any reference to modern studies, is contained in
Taher (1996).
The topics by Ambraseys and Melville (1982, 2005) and Ambraseys, Melville
and Adams (1994, 2005) present a thorough re-evaluation of the long-term seis-
micity of Iran, Saudi Arabia and the Red Sea, based as far as possible on primary
Persian, Arabic and occidental sources. These works present in some detail the
methodology proposed to assess historical seismicity by combining instrumental
data and macroseismic information.
The topic by Guidoboni (1989) is an attempt, to compile a descriptive cata-
logue of information of earthquakes in Italy and in the eastern Mediterranean as
a whole and covers the period 8th century BC to the 10th century AD. Events
are annotated and texts originating from sources in Greek and Latin are given in
their original script with a translation in Italian. Generally no attempt is made to
“de-weed” or discuss the historical information it presents.

The part of the Catalogue (and Map) of the “Global Seismic Hazard Assessment
Programme” that refers to the eastern Mediterranean region is the result of a
compilation of a kaleidoscope heterogeneous data taken from various catalogues.
And it must be used with great caution (Giardini and Basham 1993; Giardini
1999).
The topic by Ambraseys and Finkel (1995) covers Turkey and parts of the Mid-
dle East for the period from 1500 to 1800. Its value is chiefly the presentation
of unpublished Turkish and occidental sources of information about earthquakes
for this period.
The catalogues of Papazachos and Papazachou (1989, 1997, 2003) cover the
historical seismicity of Greece and adjacent regions. These are annotated compi-
lations essentially based on previous catalogues without scrutiny, adding little or
no new information.
The topic by Guidoboni, Comastri and Traina (1994) deals with earthquakes in
the Mediterranean area up to the 10th century AD. Events are annotated and texts
originating from sources written in Hieroglyphic, Greek, Hebrew, Latin, Syriac,
Coptic, Armenian, Aethiopic and Arabic, are given in their original script with a
translation into English, obviously for the very many readers who are not familiar
with these dead languages. The topic is decorated with many maps, figures and
photographs.
Theworkby Spyropoulos (1997) is an exhaustive annotated corpus of extracts
from original but chiefly secondary sources relating to historical earthquakes in
Greece.
Sbeinati, Darawcheh and Mouty (2005) present an analysis of large and mod-
erate earthquakes in Syria from 1365 BC to 1900 AD.
The topic by Guidoboni and Comastri (2005) is an ambitious work. It con-
sists of a compilation of information about earthquakes in the Eastern Mediter-
ranean region and in the Middle East over the period 1000-1499. This impressive
catalogue, 1037-page long, is written in the same style as the earlier topic by
Guidoboni, Comastri and Traina (1994) and lists 383 events of which 154 belong
to Italy and 229 to the rest of the Eastern Mediterranean.