Gadara in the context of "Bani Kinanah Department"

A devastating earthquake known in scientific literature as the Earthquake of 749 struck on January 18, 749, in areas of the Umayyad Caliphate, with the epicenter in Galilee. The most severely affected areas were west and east of the Jordan River. The cities of Tiberias, Beit She'an, Pella, Gadara, and Hippos were largely destroyed, while many other cities across the Levant were heavily damaged. The casualties numbered in the tens of thousands.

There are firm reasons to believe that there were either two, or a series of, earthquakes between 747 and 749, later conflated for different reasons into one, not least due to the use of different calendars in different sources. It seems probable that the second quake, centered more to the north, which created massive damage mainly in modern-day northern Israel and Jordan, did so not so much due to its catastrophic magnitude, but rather as a result of buildings being weakened by the previous, more southerly earthquake.

Batanaea or Batanea was an area often mentioned between the first century BCE and the fourth century CE. It is often mixed with the biblical Bashan, the part of the Biblical Holy Land, northeast of the Jordan River, as its Latinized form.

Bashan was, in biblical context, the whole region east of the Jordan, above Gadara and Abila until the Jabal al-Druze, the old Hauran (Bashan) mountains.

Capitolias (Ancient Greek: Καπιτωλιάς, romanized: Kapitolias) was an ancient city east of the Jordan River, and is identified with the modern village of Beit Ras in the Irbid Governorate in northern Jordan. Anciently it was a town of Coele-Syria.

The Peutinger Table placed it between Gadara and Adraha (Daraa), 16 miles from each, and the Antonine Itinerary put it at 36 miles from Neve (Nawa, Syria).

Umm Qais (Arabic: أم قيس, lit. 'Mother of Qais'), also known as Qays, is a town in northern Jordan principally known for its proximity to the ruins of the ancient Gadara. It is the largest city in the Bani Kinanah Department and Irbid Governorate in the extreme northwest of the country, near Jordan's borders with Israel and Syria. Today, the site is divided into three main areas: the archaeological site (Gadara), the traditional village (Umm Qais), and the modern town of Umm Qais.