On 1 January 1837, Safed was widely reported as the hardest-hit center of a major regional earthquake. The The Times (London) published a tabulated “return” of damage that recorded 5 fatalities and noted that several houses were badly damaged in the same earthquake. Soon after the earthquake struck, William McClure Thomson undertook a relief journey from Beirut to Safed, passing through Sidon along the way. In an article he wrote for the Missionary Herald (1837), he reported that in Sidon, 70–100 houses had been “altogether, or in part, thrown down,” and nearly all were badly cracked. He also recorded 7 fatalities. Twenty-four years later, in his book The Land and the Book, Thomson described the destruction in Sidon as “very noticeable.” Edward Robinson wrote in his book Biblical Researches in Palestine, Mount Sinai and Arabia Petraea: A Journal of Travels in the Year 1838 that “many houses were thrown down” in Sidon ( Robinson 1856, v.2:420–424). Sidon was also listed among the damaged cities in more modern compilations. Amiran et al. (1994) note that “some houses collapsed; many were damaged. A few persons were killed” during this event. Zohar et al. (2016: Table 3) also list Sidon among the damaged localities.