July 21, 1752 Earthquake: Palestine, Syria, Israel
An earthquake struck Palestine, Syria, Israel on July 21, 1752. It killed 20,000 people.
Map
Where it struck, with the other significant earthquakes within 200 km. Circles are sized and colored by magnitude; select one for its page.
The earthquake
- Date
- July 21, 1752
- Place
- Palestine, Syria, Israel
- Intensity
- 8 on the Modified Mercalli scale
- Tsunami
- None recorded
- Country
- Israel
The toll
- Deaths
- 20,000
Where the literature gives no number, NCEI records a description on a scale of 1 to 4, printed here in its words. Damage is in millions of US dollars of the year of the event, not adjusted for inflation.
What the record says
NCEI’s account, from the sources it cites.
1752, Syria, Palestine. 20,000 killed, strong, VIII (reference #1222)
AD 1752 Jul 21 Tripoli. According to twentieth-century catalogues, an earthquake on the Syrian and Palestinian littorals on 21 July 1752 destroyed public buildings and houses, especially in the ports, where there were 20 000 victims (Sieberg 1932b; Amiran 1952; Plassard and Kogoj 1968b). This is in fact a spurious event originating from Seyfart, who reports a felt earthquake in Tripoli, Lebanon, on 21 July 1752 (Seyfart 1756). This is a misreading on his part of a report in the Gazette de France of 19 August 1752, which, on the basis of a report from Rome, records an earthquake in the similar-sounding Tivoli, in Italy, on 21 July 1752 (PGF 1752). Later writers en1broider the Tripoli story to produce a catastrophic earthquake in the eastern Mediterranean region (Arvanitakis 1903b) . It seems that Seyfart's earthquake in Tripoli had been connected with the earthquake in Syria and Palestine in 1759. However, modern cataloguers continue to report an earthquake in Syria and Palestine on 21 July 1752. (reference #9116)
More
Significant earthquakes of 1752The 1700sThis day in weather history
Sources
Significant earthquakes from NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information, Global Historical Hazard Database, cited as NCEI/WDS, doi:10.7289/V5PN93H7. Public domain. Read 2026-09-24. NCEI earthquake 1325.