The earthquake on June 29/ July 12, 1900, in Eastern Anatolia, Turkey, based on the information in the Russian Empire periodic press

Abstract

This is our second paper on the earthquakes in Eastern Anatolia based on the information re-ported in the Russian Empire periodic press. We made a systematic study of all the newspapers in the Armenian, Georgian, and Russian languages. As a result, for the first time, the descriptions of the mac-roseismic effects from the earthquakes of June 29/July 12, 1900, which were witnessed at 14 localities, were collected. Using these data, we determined the location of the epicenter and the magnitude of the earthquake. The macroseismic magnitude 5.9 precisely coincides with the instrumental magnitude re-ported in (Ambraseys and Finkel, 1987) while the epicenter location differs by 25 km. The epicenter location estimated in this study seems to be more reliable because its determination is based only on the original descriptions of the macroseismic effect.