It was felt over an extensive area, from Sicily to Mesopotamia and Anatolia to upper Egypt, mostly affecting the Ayyubid Sultanate and the Kingdom of Jerusalem.

[2] The distribution of reported damage strongly suggests that the earthquake resulted from movement on a segment of the dominantly strike-slip Dead Sea Transform.

Most large tsunamis recorded in the eastern Mediterranean are thought to be the result of seismically triggered underwater landslides.

The affected areas – listed by decreasing order of the intensity – were, in today's terms, Lebanon, central Palestine, western Syria, Cyprus, northern Israel, Jerusalem, Jordan, southern Turkey (Antioch, Lesser Armenia, eastern Anatolia), Sicily, Iraq and Iran, Egypt (as far south as Aswan), Constantinople and Ceuta.

[10] The greatest damage was reported from Mount Lebanon, Tyre, Acre, Baalbek, Beit Jann, Samaria, Nablus, Banias, Damascus, Hauran, Tripoli and Hama (VIII–IX on the Mercalli intensity scale).