Chapter 2 - The Geological History and Structural Elements of the Middle East

Abstract

This chapter focuses on the geological history and structural elements of the Middle East. It indicates that the boundaries of the Arabian Shield, Arabian Platform and Arabian Gulf, and the margins of the Arabian Plate are all recently formed, dating from mid-and late Tertiary. In that sense, the region forms a coherent unit that is relatively easy to define. However, the changing face of the globe over geological time makes it difficult to define a unit that can be treated as such for even as short a time as the Phanerozoic. As moving one step further, it may be argued that the boundary between the Arabian Shield and the Arabian Platform may mark the suture between plates that were independent units until the end of the Pan-African movements around the beginning of the Phanerozoic. The chapter discusses the major tectonic events during the Phanerozoic in the Middle East according to their tectonic content. It presents a plate tectonic map of the Middle East to reveal the extent of the convergence zone between the Eurasian, Arabian, and Indian plates, based on seismic activity.