Among the earliest reports of the 1157 CE earthquake is that of Ibn al-Qalanisi, writing in Damascus in the early twelfth century. He recorded that at Aleppo “some of the buildings were destroyed, and its people left the town.” His notice is brief but suggests that the tremors were strong enough to cause both structural damage and mass flight, an image echoed in later accounts.

Several decades afterward, the Baghdadi historian Ibn al-Jawzi broadened the scope. He placed the event in the month of Rajab (August–September 1157) and wrote that a violent earthquake “destroyed thirteen towns — eight in Muslim territory and five in that of the Franks.” Aleppo was among the Muslim towns listed, and he added that one hundred people died there. A similar description comes from Abu Ya'la, who also noted that “some of [Aleppo’s] houses were destroyed, and its people left.” His phrasing nearly repeats Ibn al-Qalanisi’s, suggesting either a shared source or a Damascene-based narrative tradition. Farther to the north, written from a monastic center in the Jazira, the twelfth-century Syriac chronicler Michael the Syrian offered a fuller picture: “the people of Aleppo went out and stayed several days outside the city, and they were saved. Their houses were knocked down, and only five hundred people perished there.” Roughly a generation later, the Syriac polymath Bar Hebraeus reproduced almost the same story, writing that “the people of Aleppo fled from the city, and sat down outside it for days … their houses were thrown down, but only five hundred souls perished.” In Cairo in the 15th century CE, the historian Ibn Taghri Birdi summarized the outcome tersely, noting that “the towers of the fortress of Aleppo and of other towns collapsed.” Curiously, Aleppo native and Aleppo historian Kemal ad-Din (aka Ibn Al-Adim) wrote nothing about this earthquake's effects on Aleppo.