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Ghab Plain

Area of the al-Suqaylabiyah District in western Syria

Summary

Area of the al-Suqaylabiyah District in western Syria

Field	Value
name	Ghab Plain
type	Fertile depression
photo	Sahl el Ghab.jpg
photo_alt	Ghab Plain
photo_caption	Ghab Plain, as seen from Apamea, Syria
coordinates
location	Western Syria, primarily in al-Suqaylabiyah District
water_bodies	Orontes River
etymology	"Forest Plain"
area	41000 ha
length	63 km
width	12.1 km

| volcanic_arc/belt =

The Ghab Plain (, literally: Forest Plain) is a fertile depression lying mainly in the al-Suqaylabiyah District in western Syria. The Orontes River, flowing north, enters the Plain near Muhradah, around 25 km north-west of Hama.

The valley was flooded for centuries by the waters of the Orontes River, which rendered it a swamp. The "Ghab project", beginning in the 1950s, drained the valley to make it habitable, arable land, providing an extra 41000 ha of irrigated farmland.

The valley separates the al-Ansariyah mountains in the west from the Zawiyah mountain range and the plateau region to the east. It is 63 km long and 12.1 km wide.

Fisheries

Before its drainage, the Ghab was the center of the catfish (Silurus glanis) (sallōr or samak aswad) fisheries of the Orontes valley.

Ghab project

Other advantages of the Ghab project were the improvements in the systems of communication through the building of road and rail networks, previously not possible due to the swamps. In addition, malaria decreased because there was no longer stagnant water.

Al-Ruj Plain

Northeast of the Ghab Plain is found another smaller plain, known as al-Ruj Plain (Rouj basin). It is located between the Ghab Plain, and Amouk Plain. This is an agriculturally prosperous enclave just west of the town of Idlib. Many ancient archaeological sites are located there.

References

Bibliography

References

Federal Research Division, 2004, p. 74.
[https://www.water-security.org/files/2014-10/Map-Topography-Hydrology%20%281%29.jpg Topography and Hydrology Map of the Orontes valley] {{Webarchive. link. (2017-04-13 water-security.org)
Sofer, 1999, p. 205.
South, Coleman. Syria. Tarrytown, N.Y.: Marshall Cavendish Benchmark, 2006. Print.
de Miranda, 2007, p. 267.
Salman, 2009, p. 28.
J. Gaulmier, "Notes sur la pêche du silure dans la vallée du Ĝāb", ''Mélanges de l'Institut Français de Damas'' '''1''' (1929), p. 19-25
[http://wikimapia.org/26791216/al-Rouj-Plain Wikimapia location]

Wikipedia Source

This article was imported from Wikipedia and is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Content has been adapted to SurfDoc format. Original contributors can be found on the article history page.

al-ghab-plain plains-of-syria hama-governorate geography-of-idlib-governorate

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