The Great 1822 Aleppo Earthquake: New historical sources and strong ground motion simulation

Abstract

The devastating 1822 earthquake is one of the relatively recent events that struck northwestern Syria and the nearby areas of central-southern Turkey, at the junction of the Dead Sea fault system with the Eastern Anatolian fault system. This earthquake is re-examined, in this work, based on new original contemporary and near contemporary sources of information not cited in previous litera- ture. Analysis of these sources reveals the following: (1) more detailed descriptions of the earthquake effects are provided for cities of Aleppo, Antakia and Latakia, and the identification of six new loca- tions affected; (2) assessment of relevant earthquake parameters such as the epicenter, surface-wave, moment magnitudes and seismic intensity; (3) documentation of evidences of a seismic sea wave that occurred between the Cypriot and the Syrian coasts and (4) identification of the Saint Simeon fault, located to west of Aleppo, as the probable causative fault. Furthermore, the ground motion gener- ated by the 1822 earthquake has been simulated using the extended stochastic simulation method. Acceleration time series and damped pseudo acceleration spectra were generated for Aleppo Citadel, where the peak ground acceleration, due to the earthquake, has been estimated at 0.4 g. The results will contribute to updating the seismic hazard setting in the northwestern Syria and central-southern Turkey.