Abstract
Kashmir has the peculiarity of having written history of almost 5,000 years. However, the description of earthquakes in the archival contents is patchy prior to 1500 a.d. Moreover, recent search shows that there exist certain time gaps in the catalogs presently in use especially at medieval level (1128–1586 a.d.). The presence of different ruling elites in association with socioeconomic and political conditions has in many ways confused the historical context of the medieval sources. However, by a meticulous review of the Sanskrit sources (between the twelfth and sixteenth century), it has been possible to identify unspecified but fair number (eight seismic events) of earthquakes that do not exist in published catalogs of Kashmir or whose dates are very difficult to establish. Moreover, historical sources reveal that except for events which occurred during Sultan Skinder’s rule (1389–1413) and during the reign of King Zain-ul-Abidin (1420–1470), all the rediscovered seismic events went into oblivion, due mainly to the fact that the sources available dedicated their interests to the military events, which often tended to overshadow/superimpose over and even concealed natural events like earthquakes, resulting in fragmentary accounts and rendering them of little value for macroseismic intensity evaluation necessary for more efficient seismic hazard assessment.
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Acknowledgments
We are very thankful to Dr. Viviana Castelli for her valuable and insightful comments for preparing this draft. We would also like to thank Mr. Mahmood-ul-Ajaz (chief librarian) of Sri Pratap College and, as usual, Shams-ud-Din Shah and M. Yousuf Alie of Sri Pratap Library, who helped in collating the details of historical earthquakes. Thanks are due to all people at Women’s College Library, MA Road, Srinagar, especially Ms. Yasmeen Wani (chief librarian) and Farhat Jahan for helping in collating the details of the historical earthquakes. Fruitful discussions with Dr. Sajad A Darzi of the History Department of the University of Kashmir have in many ways improved our understanding of medieval history of Kashmir. We are thankful to the anonymous reviewer for his meticulous review and valuable suggestions.
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Ahmad, B., Shafi, M. Some more earthquakes from medieval Kashmir. J Seismol 18, 681–686 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10950-014-9427-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10950-014-9427-2