Damghan earthquake

On December 22, 856, an earthquake of magnitude 8 struck the city of Damghan, at that time the
capital of the area we now know as Iran. While the earthquake was centered on Damghan and
destroyed most of that city, damage to neighboring areas extended east and west over a two-
hundred-mile stretch of countryside. Every village in this area was destroyed. One third of the
town of Bustam, about fifty miles east of Damghan, collapsed. In mountain areas close to the
center of the earthquake the surface of the ground parted in several places. Overall, 200,000
people lost their lives. The memory of the event was so vivid that, two generations later, detailed
memories of all that had happened were still being recounted and is listed by the USGS as the
sixth deadliest earthquake in recorded history.

The earthquake badly affected water supplies

in the Qumis area, partly due to springs and
qanats drying up, but also because of
landslides damming streams. The total death
toll for the earthquake is reported as 200,000,
with 45,096 casualties in Damghan alone.

Iran lies within the complex zone of continental collision between the Arabian Plate and the
Eurasian Plate. The epicentral area is located in the Alborz mountain range, in which oblique
north-south shortening is accommodated by a combination of thrusting and sinistral (left-lateral)
strike-slip faulting
Šahr-e Qumis was so badly damaged that it appears to have been abandoned following the
earthquake. The effects of the earthquake were still visible in the area between Bastam and
Damghan many years later.

From the results of trenching at a single site along the Astaneh Fault a repeat period of about
3,700 years has been estimated and no large earthquakes have been recorded in the Damghan
area since 856. However, further trenching studies are needed to establish whether the entire
length of the fault is typically involved in a rupture event, or whether shorter segments may be
responsible for smaller (although damaging) earthquakes with a shorter recurrence period.

Iran has always been known as a place of earthquakes because of its location along fault lines
and between two major tectonic plates that are always colliding. In earlier times, news of
earthquakes in this remote region east of Mesopotamia was almost nonexistent. Not until the
early Islamic Period, after 622, was it possible to locate reliable records of events. Of the
significant earthquakes reported after 622 and before 922, Damghan was the most powerful.
There were about forty others within this period with magnitudes ranging from 5 to 7. At this
early stage of scientific thinking, explanations for earthquakes among the more educated
Muslims were based on Aristotle’s thinking, a sort of philosophy of nature based on mathematics
or on orderly patterns observed in nature. Unfortunately, earthquakes are anything but orderly.
We know their causes but not their timing. For the vast majority of people in 856, earthquakes
were viewed with awe and their origins attributed to the actions of a supernatural power.

Even in modern times, this theological interpretation of earthquakes is a common view. One
group regards them as punishment from their god for bad behavior. Another sees them as omens
of contemporary political events; that is, they indicate what is about to happen in a particular
country. This view is so common in China today that the government of that country delayed for
three years the detailed reporting on an earthquake that came in 1976. In the case of Iran, there
was a fairly large earthquake in that country on the sixteenth of January 1979, in which several
hundred people were killed. That particular day happened to be the one on which Shaw Pahlavi
departed from Iran, leaving the government of the country in the hands of the theological leaders
who replaced him. To many people in the country, the earthquake was evidence of the behavior
of their god in rearranging the nation’s government. With our present knowledge of the causes
and outcomes of earthquakes, Iranian patterns can be identified across time and space, some
because of local records and traditions seen to be repeating every thousand or even every five
thousand years.

The Eurasian and Arabian tectonic plates converge at an average rate of a little over one and a
half inches every year. Iran is in the middle all of this activity and its numerous fault lines bear
the evidence. Across a line that stretches east and west for more than six hundred miles strike
slip and reverse faults are the places where plate movements are expressed. In earlier times, as in
the Damghan earthquake, most of the country consisted of small farming settlements in which
homes were built of simple mud-walls, a type of construction that easily collapses when an
earthquake strikes. Some commentators have suggested that people built simple inexpensive
homes because they knew that there would be new earthquakes and they would lose whatever
they built. In places like these ancient Iranian ones, most of the deaths in an earthquake are
caused by the collapse of homes. As a result, it often happens that huge numbers of deaths are
reported from developing countries, where buildings are incapable of withstanding even low
magnitude earthquakes; while developed countries report fewer deaths when hit with similar
magnitude earthquakes.

Much of the history of homes in Iran is typical of conditions in other developing nations, so a
closer examination of how single homes and clusters of buildings are constructed in Iran is
worthwhile. In addition, their failure until very recent times to make buildings earthquake
resistant is also typical of many other countries. In December of 2003, the ancient Iranian city of
Bam was destroyed in an earthquake. It was clear in reports from the British Broadcasting
Corporation (BBC) that failed buildings were the main cause of the large number of deaths.
According to the BBC, Bam experienced a strong earthquake at four in the morning when most
of the residents were in bed. One-third of its population of 200,000 was either killed or seriously
injured. Most of the buildings, including two of the city’s hospitals, were destroyed. The BBC’s
reporter told of intense scenes of grief as survivors stood beside corpses wrapped in blankets or
buried beneath rubble. This story in all probability was very much like the one that was
recounted in Damghan twelve and a half centuries ago.

Homes built a thousand years ago and those built today in most rural areas are built of dried mud
or adobe bricks, rarely with a type of clay that gives significant strength to the building. Where
timber is available, beams can be installed for the support of flat roofs in spite of the fact that the
kind of timber available is often warped or weak from repeated use in previous constructions.
Typically, a flat roof is very heavy. It consists of some kind of boarding on which two feet of
earth is laid. A flat roof is always preferred because it provides a cool place in which to sleep
during the hot summer months and can also be used for drying crops. In mountain villages, a
common sight in a country that has one third of its land area higher than ten thousand feet above
sea level, houses are built with stones and held in place with a clay mortar. Where slopes are
steep the roof of one house becomes the ground floor and outdoors of the next home above it. On
lower elevations homes are built close together with very little space between them. When a
home is damaged, the repair work rarely tries to make the place stronger and, therefore, better
able to withstand the next earthquake.

The concept of making buildings as earthquake resistant as possible was unknown until recently.
Heavy rainfall still destroys hundreds of homes in the course of a few hours. The idea of
changing both the appearance and shape of a home to make it better able to resist an earthquake
began to appear for the first time in the second half of the twentieth century. There is one group
of Iranians who have no need to make their homes earthquake resistant—the nomadic tribes who
need homes that can be dismantled and remounted in a short time as they move from place to
place. Their homes are yurts and they are perfect examples of earthquake resistant homes. These
structures are dome-shaped, circular, tents made of collapsible walls of willow poles, known as
yurts. The roof of a yurt is domed and both roof and walls are covered with a kind of felt made
from animal wool. Dried grass and strips of leather are used for holding the structure together. In
summer, the felt sides are rolled up to admit air and, in winter, extra sheets of felt are added to
the outside for warmth. The whole structure can be taken apart and reassembled in an hour, a
vital feature for nomadic life. A yurt can provide a comfortable home for at least fifty years.