S

NAXC I VAN

( AZE R . )

G u l f o f

S u e z

G u l f o f

A q a

b a

S t r a i t o f H

o r m u z

G u l f o f K u t c h

T h e

S w

a t c

h

Cyclades

DODECANESE

Rhodes

RUSSIA

S u l a i m a n

R a n g e

H indu Kush

Zagr o s Mo u n t a i n s

Kopet D ag

Dasht-e-Lut Basin

Alb o r z Mo u ntain s

Tian Shan

Pam ir

Grea t e r C a ucasus

Delhi

Cairo

Tehran

Bombay

Karachi

Istanbul

Pune

Giza

Baku

Kabul

Jeddah

Riyadh

Jaipur

Kuwait

Lahore

Aleppo

Ankara

Almaty

Baghdad

Mashhad

Smyrana

Yerevan

Tashkent

T'Bilisi

Ahmadabad

Alexandria Faisalabad

Mecca

Ahvaz

Amman

Konya

Bursa

Shiraz

Seyhan Aintab

Tabriz

Esfahan

Bishkek

Amritsar

Peshawar

Srinagar

Dushanbe

Al Basrah

Al Mawsil

Rawalpindi

Kermanshah

2005

2001

1999

1956

1956

1949

1945

1943

1939

1935

1912

1905

1902

76 ° 78 ° 80 ° 82°

74°

74°

72°

72°

70°

70°

68°

68°

66°

66°

64°

64°

62°

62°

60°

60 °

58°

58°

5 6°

56°

5 4 °

54°

5 2 °

52°

5 0 °

50°

4 8 °

48°

4 6 °

34° 36° 38° 40° 42° 44° 46°

32°

24° 26° 28° 30° 32°

4 2°

4 2°

4 0°

4 0°

3 8°

3 8°

3 6°

3 6°

3 4°

3 4°

3 2°

3 2°

3 0°

3 0°

2 8°

2 8°

2 6°

2 6°

2 4°

2 4°

2 2°

2 2°

2 0°

2 0°

1 8°

1 8°

BULGARIA

TURKEY

SYRIA

GEORGIA

ARMENIA AZERBAIJAN

IRAQ

JORDAN

EGYPT

SUDAN

SAUDI ARABIA

U.A.E.

KUWAIT

QATAR

BAHRAIN

OMAN

IRAN

AFGHANISTAN

TURKMENISTAN

UZBEKISTAN

KAZAKHSTAN

CHINA

KYRGYZSTAN

TAJIKISTAN

INDIA

PAKISTAN

LEBANON

ISRAEL

CYPRUS

ANATOLIA BLOCK

ARABIA PLATE

AFRICA PLATE

EURASIA PLATE

INDIA PLATE

Black Sea

aeSnaegeA

Sea of

Crete

Sea of Marmara

Mediterranean Sea

Red Sea

Pers i a n Gul f

C a

spi

an 

 S e a

Aarabogazkol

Basin

Aral

Sea

Ysk Köl

Lake

Gulf of Oman

IND IAN OCEA N

Gulf of

Kumbhat

RED SEA RIFT

DEAD 

SEA TRANSFORM

NORTH ANATOLIAN FAULT

EAST ANATOLIAN FAULT

CYPRIAN ARC

MAKRAN TRENCH

CHAMAN FAULT

ALTYN TAGH FAULT

KARAKORAM FAULT

TALAS FERGHANA FAULT

MAIN PAMIR THRUST

egnaR

rahtri K

Hyderabad

34° 36° 38° 40° 42° 4 4

11

14

38

25° 30° 35° 40° 45° 50° 55° 60° 65° 70° 75° 80°

40°

35°

30°

25°

20°

Seismic Hazard and Relative Plate Motion

Kuwait

Riyadh

Jeddah

Giza

Alexandria

Damascus

Aleppo

Smyrana

Ankara

Baghdad

T’Bilisi

Baku

Yerevan

Tehran Mashhad Kabul

Tashkent

Faisalabad

Lahore

Ahmadabad Karachi

Delhi

Jaipur

Bombay

Pune

Istanbul

ANATOLIA BLOCK

ARABIA PLATE

AFRICA

PLATE

EURASIA PLATE

INDIA PLATE

Damascus

GREECE

Arabian Sea

Quetta

TECTONIC SUMMARY

No fewer than four major tectonic plates (Arabia, Eurasia, India, and Africa) and one smaller 

tectonic block (Anatolia) are responsible for seismicity and tectonics in the Middle East and 

surrounding region. Geologic development of the region is a consequence of a number of 

first-order plate tectonic processes that include subduction, large-scale transform faulting,

compressional mountain building, and crustal extension.

Mountain building in northern Pakistan and Afghanistan is the result of compressional 

tectonics, associated with collision of the India plate moving northwards at a rate of 40 mm/yr with 

respect to the Eurasia plate. Continental thickening of the northern and western edge of the India 

subcontinent has produced the highest mountains in the world, including the Himalaya, Karakorum, 

Pamir and Hindu Kush ranges. Earthquake activity and faulting found in this region, as well as 

adjacent parts of Afghanistan and India, are due to collisional plate tectonics.

Beneath the Pamir‒Hindu Kush Mountains of northern Afghanistan, earthquakes occur to 

depths as great as 200 km as a result of remnant lithospheric subduction. Shallower crustal 

earthquakes in the Pamir‒Hindu Kush Mountains occur primarily along the Main Pamir Thrust and 

other active Quaternary faults, which accommodate much of the region’s crustal shortening. The 

western and eastern margins of the Main Pamir Thrust display a combination of thrust and 

strike-slip mechanisms.

Along the western margin of the Tibetan Plateau, in the vicinity of southeastern Afghanistan 

and western Pakistan, the India plate translates obliquely relative to the Eurasia plate, resulting in 

a complex fold-and-thrust belt known as the Sulaiman Range. Faulting in this region includes 

strike-slip, reverse-slip and oblique-slip motion and often results in shallow, destructive 

earthquakes. The relatively fast moving left-lateral, strike-slip Chaman Fault system in southeastern 

Afghanistan accommodates translational motion between the India and Eurasia plates. In 1505, a 

segment of the Chaman Fault system near Kabul, Afghanistan, ruptured causing widespread 

destruction of Kabul and surrounding villages. In the same region, the more recent May 30, 1935, 

M7.6 Quetta, Pakistan, earthquake occurred within the Kirthar range, killing between 30,000 and 

60,000 people.

Off the south coast of Pakistan and southeast coast of Iran, the Makran trench is the presentday surface expression of active subduction of the Arabia plate beneath the continental Eurasia 

plate, which converge at a rate of approximately 20 mm/yr. Although the Makran subduction zone 

has a relatively slow convergence rate, it has produced large devastating earthquakes and tsunamis. 

For example, the November 27, 1945, M8.0 mega-thrust earthquake produced a tsunami within the 

Gulf of Oman and Arabian Sea, killing over 4,000 people. Northwest of this active subduction zone, 

collision of the Arabia and Eurasia plates forms the approximately 1,500-km-long fold and thrust 

belts of the Zagros Mountains, which crosses the whole of western Iran and extends into northeastern Iraq. Collision of the Arabia and Eurasia plates also causes crustal shortening in the Alborz 

Mountains and Kopet Dag in Northern Iran. Eastern Iran undergoes destructive earthquakes that 

originate on both strike-slip and reverse faults. For example, the September 16, 1978, M7.4 

earthquake, along the northwest edge of the Dasht-e-Lut Basin, killed at least 15,000 people. 

Though smaller, the M6.5 December 26, 2008, Bam earthquake, near the southwestern edge of the 

Dasht-e-Lut Basin, resulted in over 25,000 deaths.

Along the eastern margin of the Mediterranean region there is complex interaction among 

Africa, Arabia, and Eurasia plates. The Red Sea Rift is a spreading center between the Africa and 

Arabia plates, with a spreading rate of approximately 10 mm/yr near its northern end, and 16 

mm/yr near its southern end (Chu and Gordon, 1998). Seismicity rate and size of 

earthquakes has been relatively small along the spreading center, but the rifting process has 

produced a series of volcanic systems across western Saudi Arabia.

Further north, the Red Sea Rift terminates at the southern boundary of the Dead Sea Transform 

Fault. The Dead Sea Transform is a strike-slip fault that accommodates differential motion 

between the Africa and Arabia plates. Though both the Africa plate, to the west, and the Arabia 

plate, to the east, are moving in a NNE direction, the Arabia plate is moving slightly faster, 

resulting in the left-lateral, strike-slip motion along this segment of the plate boundary. Historically, 

earthquake activity along the Dead Sea Transform has been a significant hazard in the densely 

populated Levant region (eastern Mediterranean). For example, the November 1759 Near East 

earthquake is thought to have killed somewhere between 2,000‒20,000 people. The northern 

termination of the Dead Sea Transform occurs within a complex tectonic region of southeast 

Turkey, where interaction of the Africa and Arabia plates and the Anatolia block occurs. This 

involves translational motion of the Anatolia block westwards, with a speed of approximately 25 

mm/yr with respect to Eurasia, in order to accommodate closure of the Mediterranean Basin.

The right-lateral, strike-slip North Anatolia Fault, in northern Turkey, accommodates much of 

the westwards motion between the Anatolia block and Eurasia plate. Between 1939 and 1999, a 

series of devastating M7.0+ strike-slip earthquakes propagated westward along the North Anatolia 

Fault system. The westernmost of these earthquakes was the August 17, 1999, M7.6 Izmit 

earthquake, near the Sea of Marmara, which killed approximately 17,000 people.

At the southern edge of the Anatolia block lies the east-west trending Cyprian Arc with 

associated levels of moderate seismicity. The Cyprian Arc represents the convergent boundary 

between the Anatolia block to the north and the Africa plate to the south. The boundary is thought 

to join the East Anatolia Fault zone in eastern Turkey; however, no certain geometry or sense of 

relative motion along the entire boundary is widely accepted.

DATA SOURCES

The earthquake locations shown on the main map (left) are taken from the global 1900‒2007 

Centennial Catalog (Engdahl and Villaseñor, 2002), a catalog of high-quality depth determinations 

for the period 1964‒2002 (Engdahl, personal commun., 2003), and U. S. Geological SurveyPreliminary Determination of Epicenters (USGS-PDE, http://earthquake.usgs.gov/research/data/pde.php) 

for the years 2008‒2010.

Major earthquakes (7.5≤M≤8.2) are labeled with the year of occurrence, while earthquakes 

(8.0≤M≤8.2) are labeled with the year of occurrence and also denoted by a white outline (Tarr and 

others, 2010).

The Seismic Hazard and Relative Plate Motion figure (lower left) shows the generalized seismic 

hazard (Giardini and others, 1999) and relative plate motion vectors (open arrows with labels) 

using the Morvel model (DeMets and others, 1994).

Base map data sources include GEBCO 2008 shaded relief, Volcanoes of the World dataset 

(Siebert and Simkin, 2002); plate boundaries (Bird, 2003); and geographic information from Digital 

Chart of the World (1992), and ESRI (2002).

REFERENCES

Bird, Peter, 2003, An updated digital model of plate boundaries: Geochemistry Geophysics Geosystems, v. 

4, no. 3, 52 p.

Chu, D., Gordon, R.G., 1998, Current plate motions across the Red Sea: Geophysical Journal International, 

v. 135, is. 2, p. 313‒328.

Daëron, M., Klinger, Y., Tapponnier, P., Elias, A., Jacques, E., and Sursock, A., 2005, Sources of the large 

A.D. 1202 and 1759 Near East earthquakes: Geology, v. 35, p. 755‒758, doi:10.1130/G23631A.1.

DeMets, Charles, Gordon, R.G., Argus, D.F., and Stein, Seth, 1994, Effect of recent revisions to the 

geomagnetic time scale on estimates of current plate motions: Geophysical Research letters, v. 21, p. 

2191‒2194.

Digital Chart of the World, 1992: Accessed on Mar. 9, 1996 at 

http://earth-info.nga.mil/publications/specs/printed/89009/98009_DCW.pdf.

Engdahl, E.R., and Villaseñor, Antonio, 2002, Global seismicity 1900‒1999, in Lee, . W.H.K., Kanamori, 

Hiroo, Jennings, P.C., and Kisslinger, Carl, eds., International Handbook of Earthquake and 

Engineering Seismology, v. 81(A), chap. 41, p. 1‒26.

ESRI, 2002, ESRI data and maps: Redlands, Calif., ESRI. Available at 

http://www.esri.com/data/data-maps.

GEBCO, 2008, The GEBCO_08_Grid, ver. 20091120: GEBCO. Accessed Jan. 8, 2010 at 

http://www.gebco.net.

Giardini, D., Grunthal, G., Shedlock, K., Zhang. P., and Global Seismic Hazards Program, 1999, Global 

seismic hazards map: Accessed on Jan. 9, 2007 at http://www.seismo.ethz.ch/GSHAP.

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), 2010: National Geophysical data Center 

(NGDC): National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Accessed on Mar. 31, 2010 at 

http://www.ngdc.noaa.gov/ngdc.html.

Siebert, Lee, and Simkin, Thomas, 2002, Volcanoes of the world—An illustrated catalog of Holocene 

volcanoes and their eruptions: Smithsonian Institution, Global Volcanism Program Digital Information 

Series, GVP-3. Accessed on Jan. 9, 2007 at http://www.volcano.si.edu/world.

Tarr, A.C., Villaseñor, Antonio, Furlong, K.P., Rhea, Susan, and Benz, H.M., 2010, Seismicity of the Earth 

1900‒2007: U.S. Geological Survey Scientific Investigations Map 3064, scale 1:25,000,000. Available 

at http://pubs.usgs.gov/sim/3064.

8.2

4–5.9

6–6.4

6.5–6.9

7–7.4

7.5

7.6

7.7

7.8

7.9

8.0

8.1

Active volcanoes

Country

Boundary

0–69 km

70–299 km

300–700 km

Others

Subduction

Transform

Divergent

Large Active

Fault

MAP EXPLANATION

Magnitude classes Depth of focus

Plate boundaries

0 100 200 400 600 800 KILOMETERS

Scale 1: 7 000 000

0 300 600 900 1200

Scale 1: 28 300 000

KILOMETERS

Country

Boundary

Large Active

Fault

Subduction

Transform

Divergent

Others

0– 0.2 m/s2

0.2– 0.4

0.4– 0.8

0.8– 1.6

1.6– 3.2

3.2– 6.4

6.4– 9.8

Relative plate

motion in mm/yr

4 3

FIGURE EXPLANATION

Peak ground acceleration

Plate boundaries

U.S. Department of the Interior

U.S. Geological Survey

Seismicity of the Earth 1900–2010

Middle East and Vicinity

Compiled by Jennifer Jenkins,1 Bethan Turner,1 Rebecca Turner,1 Gavin P. Hayes,2 Sian Davies,1 Richard L. Dart,2 Arthur C. Tarr,2 Antonio Villaseñor,3 and Harley M. Benz2

2013

1Department of Earth and Ocean Sciences, University of Liverpool, Liverpool, United Kingdom

2U.S. Geological Survey

3Institute of Earth Sciences, CSIC, Barcelona, Spain

Open-File Report 2010–1083-K

Publishing support provided by: 

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Manuscript approved for publication January 4, 2013

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the public domain, it also contains copyrighted materials as 

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items for other than personal use must be secured from the 

copyright owner.

Suggested citation:

Jenkins, Jennifer, Turner, Bethan, Turner, Rebecca, Hayes, 

G.P., Davies, Sian, Dart, R.L., Tarr, A.C., Villaseñor, Antonio, 

and Benz, H.M., compilers, 2013, Seismicity of the Earth 

1900–2010 Middle East and vicinity: U.S. Geological Survey 

Open-File Report 2010–1083-K, 1 sheet, scale 1:7,000,000.

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Albers Equal Area Conic Projection

Digital Map database and cartography by

Arthur C.Tarr and Susan Rhea