Historical geography of earthquakes in Iran: Seismic documents (from the beginning to the Safavid era)

Famines, floods, earthquakes, devastating wars, epidemics, etc. among people throughout history are the most important topics that can be discussed in the topic of social history or ethnography. In this article, from a historical point of view, we have discussed the distribution of these earthquakes and the historical effects left behind in the Iranian plateau area. Documents related to earthquakes in pre-Islamic Iran are rare. But in the Islamic period (due to the expansion of the tradition of history writing), researchers sought to record natural events. The map of the distribution of earthquakes in the history of Iran during the first ten centuries of Hijri shows that the main centers of earthquakes in the first two Islamic centuries were in Sistan and Khorasan. The third and fourth centuries can be called the century of earthquakes in all of Iran. The fifth century can be considered as the century of earthquakes in Khorasan and Azerbaijan. The sixth century can be considered the century of peace in Khorasan and Azerbaijan. But instead, the 7th and 8th centuries are the centuries of terrible earthquakes in Tabriz and Khorasan. The 9th century is the century of earthquakes in the south and north coasts of Iran, and in the 10th century, apart from Tabriz and Qain, the important city of Shiraz was shaken. In the 11th century, Tabriz, Khorsan and Lar are exposed to earthquakes. In general, the Seleucids were more exposed to earthquakes than other governments in the history of Iran. Also, the important cities of Tabriz, Ray and Neishabour are the most earthquake-prone, and Isfahan is considered the safest.