Several other previous events occurred in the same region , and by comparison both the 1202 Syria earthquake and the Near East earthquakes of 1759 had larger magnitudes than the 1837 event and have been associated with the Yammouneh fault in Lebanon . However , no other earthquakes of similar size occurred in the Dead Sea zone after seismometers began being used around the turn of the twentieth century , so Nicholas Ambraseys mapped the intensity values reported from more than 120 locations within the affected area and used the values to create a relationship with a group of 158 earthquakes in nearby Turkey and northern Syria with known intensities and magnitudes to predict the surface wave magnitude for this event . The average radius of the isoseismals in the area helped to estimate a magnitude of 7.0 to 7.1 for the event
Near East earthquakes of 1759
Near East earthquakes of 1759
Galilee earthquake of 1837