N. Ambraseys 2009. Earthquakes in the Mediterranean and Middle East: a multidisciplinary study of seismicity up to 1900. Cambridge University Press. xx + 947pp. Price £120.00, US $210.00 (hard covers). ISBN 978 0 521 87292 8.

Abstract

It is a great relief to see this monumental work finally printed. Professor Ambraseys has towered over research into historical earthquakes for 50 years. He didn't invent the subject, but he certainly demonstrated how it should be done to standards that make it effective, with a level of scholarship that very few people can match. That it is important is beyond doubt: earthquakes repeat on particular faults only every few hundred or thousand years, even in places that are moving quickly, like California. The modern, high-quality, instrumental record of earthquakes provided by seismology is only about one hundred years long, and is clearly inadequate to see longer-term patterns. Ambraseys has been pointing this out for years: thus, for instance, the Dead Sea fault system, from Aqaba to Antioch, has been very quiet in the 20th century, but was the site of several enormous earthquakes over the previous thousand years, some of which are well-documented by historical sources in crusader times. The last 100 years are simply not representative of the longer period, …