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Engineering Geology of Holy Karbala City

Authors :

Naser Hafezi Moghaddas¹ Hammed Ghorbanpour²

1- دانشگاه فردوسی مشهد 2- شرکت بهره برداری نفت و گاز شرق

Keywords :

Mesopotamia،Karbala city,،, Euphrates,،Engineering geology

Abstract :

In this study, general geology, hydrology and engineering geology of Karbala city is presented. Karbala is one of the holy cities of Shia Muslims. City of Karbala was born simultaneous with martyrdom of Imam Hossein and his companions. But the name of Karbala such as Baghdad and Babylon are an ancient name with several thousand years old. In general, the area of Karbala or Nineveh was known as a holy area and a place of worship since the time of the Babylonians, Chaldeans, Assyrians and Sasanians. Geologically, Karbala located between the Mesopotamia plain and Arabian shield. The Euphrates or Abu-Jir fault system separates these two units. The Mesopotamia region is the continuation of the Zagros foredeep which includes Mesopotamia, Kuwait, the coast of Iran and the Persian Gulf and the northeast of Syria. Rock outcrops in the Karbala area from the past to the recent are included Euphrates Nafil, Injana, Dibdiba, Zahra formations and Quaternary sediments. Quaternary deposits comprise of aeoline, floodplain, channel river, levees, marsh deposits and recent alluvial fans. The area has two shallow and main aquifers. The groundwater table of the shallow aquifer is about 3 meters and water table in the main aquifer decrease from 32 meters from southwest to 22 meters in Northeast which completely follows the topography.