Auroras at such low latitudes are generally observed at very low elevation (i.e. close to the horizon) and are significantly less bright due to the increased atmospheric absorption of light. They are also by nature transient events that don't last very long. Night sky visibility close to the horizon in the Middle east is notoriously bad due to either dust or mountains. I would say the most likely explanation is that those conditions just made it incredibly hard to observe and therefore very unlikely that anybody did. For comparison, contemporary accounts further north mention it was comparable in brightness to some of the brightest stars, even though these accounts may be a bit exaggerated. In a desert plain it can hard to make out anything but the brightest starts close to the horizon, and it would be even worse for the much more diffuse light of the auroras. Especially so for an event that lasts a few hours and you have no advance knowledge to look for it on the right side of the sky. Your best bet would be a high altitude observer, that had a clear, unobstructed view of the northern horizon, no clouds or a lot of moonlight, that looked north at the right time, wrote it down and was taken seriously. Credible reports of auroras from that event, that close to the equator, do exist but are very scarce for that reason.

Also important to add that the accounts suggest the peak was during night-time in North America, therefore it would have been day time in the Middle East and therefore not observable. By the time the sky went dark there the brightness would have been much lower.