[6] In the region, the Egyptians (led by Ibrahim Pasha of Egypt) had recently succeeded in overpowering the Ottomans and gained control of Southern Syria during the Egyptian–Ottoman War (1831–1833).

Sidon was damaged considerably, and in Tyre the fallen homes made the streets nearly impassable, with people sleeping in boats and in tents alongside the shore.

The village of Rumaish was mostly destroyed, with 30 deaths occurring as people were crushed in their homes, and many more would have suffered the same had they not been at evening prayers at the church there, which was a small building that was not seriously damaged.

[8] The types of homes that were built in that time and area, usually one story rubble masonry with heavy flat roofs that were often already damaged, were not resistant to even a small amount of shaking.

Some cities were built on steep hillsides overlooking the plains (done for security reasons), while other sites were located on unstable soil where landslides had occurred previously.

[1] Every house and the local church in the village of Jish was destroyed, and all the parishioners, totaling 135 people, were killed, with only the priest surviving the collapse of the vaulted stone roof there.

The aftershocks were spread over a distance of 70 kilometers (43 mi) and that length matches the north–south region of the epicentral area that was mapped by Ambraseys and could indicate that the Roum fault, and its extension south to the Sea of Galilee, were sources of the event.

[16] The Dead Sea Transform, also known as the Levant Fracture, produces strong but infrequent earthquakes, and all pre-instrumental information regarding the area shows that it was experiencing an inactive period during the 20th century.

[17] Researchers M. Vered and H. L. Striem conducted a study on both the 1927 Jericho earthquake and the January 1837 event, with a close look at damage data to gain a good estimate of Modified Mercalli intensity values.