Described as “moderate”, the quake was eight kilometres (five miles) deep and was followed by five aftershocks.
The provincial governor, Mohammad-Reza Pourmohammadi, told Iranian media that rescue operations were underway in 41 villages, but the damage was largely concentrated in two, Varnakesh and Varzaghan.
According to the emergency services, nearly 340 people were admitted to hospital for treatment, but all but 17 were discharged by Friday noon.
Some 40 homes were levelled by the quake and over 200 head of cattle killed.
State television broadcast images of people who had fled their homes warming themselves around a fire lit on a public highway.
But the damage appeared to be less widespread than initially feared.
The United States Geological Survey (USGS) had issued an alert warning that “significant casualties are likely and the disaster is potentially widespread”.
In many areas people had returned to their homes by daybreak after the initial panic subsided and the aftershocks petered out.
The gas supply was restored to all but one of the affected villages.
The quake was felt in the provincial capital Tabriz and as far away as the city of Rasht, near the Black Sea coast 200 kilometres (125 miles) from the epicentre.
The country has suffered a number of major disasters in recent decades, including at the ancient city of Bam, which was decimated by a catastrophic earthquake in 2003 that killed at least 31,000 people.
In 1990, a 7.4-magnitude quake in northern Iran killed 40,000 people, injured 300,000 and left half a million homeless, reducing dozens of towns and nearly 2,000 villages to rubble.
Iran has experienced at least two other significant quakes in recent years — one in 2005 that killed more than 600 people and another in 2012 that left some 300 dead. Post Views: 5 GET TOP NEWS FOR THE DAY DIRECT TO YOUR INBOX / <![CDATA[ / (function(){function e(){for(var a;b[0]&&"loaded"==b[0].readyState;)a=b.shift(),a.onreadystatechange=null,c.parentNode.insertBefore(a,c)}for(var f=["//connect.facebook.net/en_US/sdk.js#xfbml=1&version=v2.5","//platform.linkedin.com/in.js","//apis.google.com/js/platform.js","//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js","//ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/webfont/1/webfont.js","//widgets.getpocket.com/v1/j/btn.js?v=1","//pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/js/adsbygoogle.js","//www.googletagservices.com/tag/js/gpt.js","//www.capitalfm.co.ke/adserver/www/delivery/asyncjs.php"],d,a,b=[],c=document.scripts[0];d=f.shift();)"async"in c?(a=document.createElement("script"),a.async=!1,a.src=d,document.head.appendChild(a)):c.readyState?(a=document.createElement("script"),b.push(a),a.onreadystatechange=e,a.src=d):document.write('<script src="'+d+'" defer>x3c/script>')})(); / ]]> /
