Southern Armenia lies within the complex zone of continental collision between the Arabian plate and the Eurasian plate, which extends from the Bitlis-Zagros belt in the south to the Greater Caucasus Mountains, the Apsheron-Balkan Sill and the Kopet Dag mountains in the north.

Movement on the Parackar-Dvin segment of this fault system has been associated with a series of large earthquakes in the second half of the 9th century.

[1][6] The earthquake had ruined the city's defenses and Dvin was taken by Muhammad ibn Abi'l-Saj, the Sajid emir of Adharbayjan, who turned it into a military base.

Several Armenian sources place it clearly at Dvin in Armenia, the night after an eclipse of the moon that occurred on 27 December 893.

Almost all of the Dvin earthquake's details are repeated in these reports, although in most cases the observed lunar eclipse has become solar.