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Syria Land, Water, and Climate
Along the Mediterranean, a narrow coastal plain stretches
south from the Turkish border to Lebanon. The flatness of this
littoral, covered with sand dunes, is broken only by lateral
promontories running down from the mountains to the sea
(see
fig. 5). Syria claims a territorial limit of 35 nautical miles off its
Mediterranean coastline.
The Jabal an Nusayriyah mountains, a range paralleling the
coastal plain, average just over 1,212 meters; the highest peak,
Nabi Yunis, is about 1,575 meters. The western slopes catch
moisture-laden western sea winds and are thus more fertile and
more heavily populated than the eastern slopes, which receive
only hot, dry winds blowing across the desert. Before reaching
the Lebanese border and the Anti-Lebanon Mountains, the Jabal an
Nusayriyah range terminates, leaving a corridor--the Homs Gap--
through which run the highway and railroad from Homs to the
Lebanese port of Tripoli. For centuries the Homs Gap has been a
favorite trade and invasion route from the coast to the country's
interior and to other parts of Asia. Eastward, the line of the
Jabal an Nusayriyah is separated from the Jabal az Zawiyah range
and the plateau region by the Al Ghab depression, a fertile,
irrigated trench crossed by the meandering Orontes River.
Inland and farther south, the Anti-Lebanon Mountains rise to
peaks of over 2,700 meters on the Syrian-Lebanese frontier and
spread in spurs eastward toward the plateau region. The eastern
slopes have little rainfall and vegetation and merge eventually
with the desert.
In the southwest, the lofty Mount Hermon (Jabal ash Shaykh),
also on the border between Syria and Lebanon, descends to the
Hawran Plateau-- frequently referred to as the Hawran--that
receives rain-bearing winds from the Mediterranean. All but the
lowest slopes of Mount Hermon are uninhabited, however. Volcanic
cones, some of which reach over 900 meters, intersperse the open,
rolling, once-fertile Hawran Plateau south of Damascus and east
of the Anti-Lebanon Mountains. Southwest of the Hawran lies the
high volcanic region of the Jabal Druze range (renamed Jabal al
Arab), home of the country's Druze population
(see Druzes
, this
ch.)
The entire eastern plateau region is intersected by a low
chain of mountains, the Jabal ar Ruwaq, the Jabal Abu Rujmayn,
and the Jabal Bishri, extending northeastward from the Jabal Al
Arab to the Euphrates River. South of these mountains lies a
barren desert region known as the Hamad. North of the Jabal ar
Ruwaq and east of the city of Homs is another barren area known
as the Homs Desert, which has a hard-packed dirt surface.
Northeast of the Euphrates River, which originates in the
mountains of Turkey and flows diagonally across Syria into Iraq,
is the fertile Jazirah region that is watered by the tributaries
of the Euphrates. The area underwent irrigation improvements
during the 1960s and 1970s, and it provides substantial cereal
and cotton crops. Oil and natural gas discoveries in the extreme
northeastern portion of the Jazirah have significantly enhanced
the region's economic potential.
The country's waterways are of vital importance to its
agricultural development. The longest and most important river is
the Euphrates, which represents more than 80 percent of Syria's
water resources. Its main left-bank tributaries, the Balikh and
the Khabur, are both major rivers and also rise in Turkey. The
right-bank tributaries of the Euphrates, however, are small
seasonal streams called wadis. In 1973, Syria completed
construction of the Tabaqah Dam on the Euphrates River upstream
from the town of Ar Raqqah. The dam created a reservoir named
Lake Assad (Buhayrat al Assad), a body of water about 80
kilometers long and averaging eight kilometers in width.
Throughout the arid plateau region east of Damascus, oases,
streams, and a few interior rivers that empty into swamps and
small lakes provide water for local irrigation. Most important of
these is the Barada, a river that rises in the Anti-Lebanon
Mountains and disappears into the desert. The Barada creates the
Al Ghutah Oasis, site of Damascus. This verdant area, some 370
kilometers square, has enabled Damascus to prosper since ancient
times. In the mid-1980s, the size of Al Ghutah was gradually
being eroded as suburban housing and light industry from Damascus
encroached on the oasis.
Areas in the Jazirah have been brought under cultivation with
the waters of the Khabur River (Nahr al Khabur). The Sinn, a
minor river in Al Ladhiqiyah Province, is used to irrigate the
area west of the Jabal an Nusayriyah, about 32 kilometers
southwest of the port of Latakia. In the south the springs that
feed the upper Yarmuk River are diverted for irrigation of the
Hawran. Underground water reservoirs that are mainly natural
springs are tapped for both irrigation and drinking. The richest
in underground water resources is the Al Ghab region, which
contains about 19 major springs and underground rivers that have
a combined yield of thousands of liters per minute.
The most striking feature of the climate is the contrast of
sea and desert. Between the humid Mediterranean coast and the
arid desert regions lies a semiarid steppe zone extending across
three-fourths of the country and bordered on the west by the
Anti-Lebanon Mountains and the Jabal an Nusayriyah, on the north
by the Turkish mountain region, and on the southeast by the Jabal
al Arab, Jabal ar Ruwaq, Jabal Abu Rujmayn, and the Jabal Bishri
ranges.
Rainfall in this area is fairly abundant, annual
precipitation ranging between 75 and 100 centimeters. Most of the
rain, carried by winds from the Mediterranean, falls between
November and May. The annual mean temperatures range from 7.2°
C
in January to 26.6° C in August. Because the high ridges of the
Jabal an Nusayriyah catch most of the rains from the
Mediterranean, the Al Ghab depression, located east of these
mountains, is in a relatively arid zone with warm, dry winds and
scanty rainfall. Frost is unknown in any season, although the
peaks of the Jabal an Nusayriyah are sometimes snow covered.
Farther south, rain-bearing clouds from the Mediterranean
pass through the gap between the Jabal an Nusayriyah and the
Anti-Lebanon Mountains, reaching the area of Homs and, sometimes,
the steppe region east of that city. Still farther to the south,
however, the Anti-Lebanon Mountains bar the rains from the
Mediterranean, and the area, including the capital city of
Damascus, becomes part of the semiarid climatic zone of the
steppe, with precipitation averaging less than 20 centimeters a
year and with temperatures from 4.4° C in January to
37.7° C in July and August. The vicinity of the capital is,
nevertheless, verdant and cultivable because of irrigation from
the Barada River by aqueducts built during Roman times.
In the southeast, the humidity decreases, and annual
precipitation falls below 10 centimeters. The scanty amounts of
rain, moreover, are highly variable from year to year, causing
periodic droughts. In the barren stony desert south of the Jabal
ar Ruwaq, Jabal Abu Rujmayn, and Jabal Bishri ranges,
temperatures in July often exceed 43.3° C. Sandstorms, common
during February and May, damage vegetation and prevent grazing.
North of the desert ranges and east of the Al Ghab depression lie
the vast steppes of the plateau, where cloudless skies and high
daytime temperatures prevail during the summer, but frosts, at
times severe, are common from November to March. Precipitation
averages 25 centimeters a year but falls below 20 centimeters in
a large belt along the southern desert area. In this belt, only
the Euphrates and Khabur rivers provide sufficient water for
settlement and cultivation.
Data as of April 1987
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