The series of destructive earthquakes centered on Aleppo in October 1138 CE, was vividly described by a range of chroniclers, several of whom were closely connected to northern Syria.

Ibn al‑Qalanisi, writing in Damascus in the early twelfth century, gave one of the earliest detailed accounts culled from what he deemed to be "trustworthy" people. He recorded that Aleppo and its surroundings suffered the worst damage: countless houses collapsed, walls cracked, and even the walls of the citadel shook. The people fled to the countryside in fear as the shocks continued. Reports varied between eighty and one hundred separate tremors, a discrepancy that Ibn al-Qalānisi himself noted, remarking that “God knows what is true and what is false.”

A similar observation appears in the Syriac chronicle of Michael the Syrian, who wrote that in October 1138 CE, an earthquake destroyed towers in Bizaʿah and Aleppo. Although some modern translations omit Aleppo (Harrak, 2019), others retain it, showing variation in the textual tradition. Writing from Mosul, Ibn al‑Athir described the same event in Ṣafar 533 (October 1138). He reported many frightening tremors throughout Syria and the Jazīra, the worst centered on Aleppo. The inhabitants, overwhelmed by the continual shaking, abandoned their houses and camped in open fields, counting eighty tremors during one night and noting high levels of seismic activity between the 4th and 19th of Ṣafar (11-26 October). Local testimony was preserved by Kemal ad-Din (also known as Ibn al-ʿAdīm), a native son of Aleppo, who gave a vivid account. On Thursday 13 Ṣafar, he wrote, a “prodigious earthquake” struck Aleppo, forcing people to flee into the countryside as stones fell from walls into the streets and a terrible noise filled the air.

Later historians repeated these earlier narratives. Abu'l-Fida summarized that continual earthquakes in Syria reduced many towns to ruins and forced the inhabitants of Aleppo to live in tents outside the city. The Aleppine chronicler Ibn Al Shihna also noted earthquakes recurring between the 4th and 19th of Ṣafar (11-26 October), compelling residents to take refuge in the open, echoing his predecessors. Finally, the fifteenth-century Egyptian scholar as‑Suyūṭī cited Ibn al-Qalānisi, noting that the earthquakes destroyed Aleppo's city wall and the towers of its citadel.