Kocaman, IrfanGurbuz, Muhammed2026-03-262026-03-2620231350-63071873-196110.1016/j.engfailanal.2023.1073872-s2.0-85163050388https://doi.org/10.1016/j.engfailanal.2023.107387https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14901/3191Gürbüz, Muhammed/0000-0001-6628-3363; Kocaman, İrfan/0000-0002-1774-7114Historical mosques are important cultural heritages that should be confidently transferred to the future. These structures are damaged due to earthquakes. The minarets, domes and load-carrying walls of historical mosques are the most damaged and studied in the literature. Field observations made after the earthquakes show that; the narthex part of the historical mosques is also very seismic sensitive. However, there is no study in the literature about the collapse mechanisms of these structures/parts. In this study, 3 narthex places with different architectural features were considered. By creating a finite element model of the narthexes, dynamic analyses were carried out under the earthquake records of 1999 Duzce (Bolu) (Mw = 7.1), 2011 Van (Mw = 7.0), 2020 Elazig (Sivrice) (Mw = 6.8). An evaluation has been done to assess mode shapes, maximum strains, displacements, damage distributions, and failure mechanisms of the narthex parts. As a result of dynamic analyses, the general collapse mechanism of each narthex was revealed. As a result of all analyses, it has been seen that the most seismically sensitive areas of the narthex are stone columns.eninfo:eu-repo/semantics/closedAccessHistorical Masonry NarthexCollapse MechanismNonlinear Dynamic AnalysisStrong Ground MotionArticle