Part I: State of Research, Concepts and Methods -- Historical Disaster Experiences: First Steps towards a Comparative and Transcultural History of Disasters across Asia and Europe in the Pre-industrial Era -- Living with Hazard: Disaster Subcultures, Disaster Cultures and Risk-Mitigating Strategies -- Part II: Materiality of Disasters: Natural Impact, Social Experience -- Several Natural Disasters in the Middle East (at the Beginning of the Eleventh Century) and their Consequences -- Fanāʾ and Fasād: Perceptions and Concepts of Crises and Disasters in Fourteenth-century Egypt -- The Black Death and Human Impact on the Environment -- The day the sun turned blue. A volcanic eruption in the early 1460s and its possible climatic impact – a natural disaster perceived globally in the late Middle Ages? -- Cultural Implications of Natural Disasters: Historical Reports of the Volcano Eruption of July, 1256 A.D -- When Europe was burning. The multi-seasonal mega-drought of 1540 and the arsonist paranoia -- Part III: Heaven and Earth: Searching for Reasons -- Assur will suffer: Predicting disaster in Ancient Egypt -- ‘Natural’ Disasters in the Arabic Astro-meteorological Malhama Handbooks -- Tracing the Will of the Stars: Indian Astrology and Divination about Natural Disasters and Threats -- Explaining the Bihar Earthquake of 1934: The Role of Science, Astrology and ‘Rumours’ -- Part IV: Urban Experience: Earthquakes and Fire -- The 1173/1759 Earthquake in Damascus and the Continuation of Architectural Tradition -- Living with Disaster: Aleppo and the Earthquake of 1822 -- ‘The Great Fire in Cairo of 1321’ – Interactions between Nature and Society -- Perceiving Urban Fire Regimes in Europe and China, 1830s to 1870s: British Fire Insurance Businesses and the Sudden Challenge of Globalisation -- Part V: Frequent Experience and Adaptations: Floods and Landscapes of Defence -- Economic adaptation to risky environment in the late Middle Ages. The case of the ‘accrues’ of the Doubs in Chaussin (Jura, France) from c. 1370 to c. 1500 -- Measuring ‘disaster’? The ‘everydayness’ of fluvial landscapes and the colonial state in Gangetic diaras, 1790s-1880s -- When the ‘Deluge’ Happened: The Flood of 1929 in the Surma-Barak Valley of Colonial Assam -- Alpine landscapes of defence – On modern-vernacular avalanche protection systems in the Swiss Alps.