The event of November 25 takes place…
November 1759 CE
A second slight shock is felt eight minutes later, and the following night at 9 pm there is an undulating aftershock that lasts a few seconds.
Many more shocks are recorded during the following days with a forty-second event at 2 pm on the 28th.
In Aleppo, people are frightened, but no one is killed and damage is slight, and in Antioch some buildings collapse with some deaths occurring there.
In Damascus, however, a third of the city is in ruins, with many thousands having been killed.
Many who survive there escape to the fields to remain safe and, out of fear, do not return to help those in need.
Tripoli sustains more damage than Aleppo; many houses collapse and the residents take shelter in the open fields.
Acre and Ladikiah experience only minor damage to some of their walls, but the town of Safet, located on a hill, is totally destroyed and many of its inhabitants killed.
Several slight aftershocks will also occur in December and January.
The large scale temples and courts built in Baalbek during the Roman Empire had deteriorated since their construction nearly two thousand years earlier. During this stretch of time, earthquakes frequently occurred in that area, and these no doubt contributed to its dilapidated condition.
Periods of active seismicity came and went, with significant events like the 551 Beirut earthquake damaging much of the Levant and including Baalbek, but other more active periods such as 1156–57, and 1159–70 were especially destructive and repairs to the walls there were made after the earthquake of 1170.
The region had become less active seismically between the fourteenth and seventeenth centuries, aside from a large event that was damaging to Jerusalem in 1546; the events in 1759 interrupt this relatively silent period.
As a result of the multiple earthquakes in 1759, most of the houses and ramparts within Baalbek are completely destroyed, with many of the temples' columns toppled as well.
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