Passing along the glorious Euphrates river in Syria

You can contemplate how amazing the Euphrates is when you are heading West coming from the North-Eastern part of Syria. This N-E part of Syria, called the Khabur valley is the northern border of dry farming, which means this region deals with 150mm of precipitation per YEAR!!! Dry farming techniques were and are practiced. They were in the 2nd and third Millennium B.C.E. with the extensive use of canalization systems. Today, due to a slow desertification of the Khabur valley, dry farming is more and more difficult and results are just not satisfying. Just outside of Aleppo, there is an International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas... New techniques must be introduced to help local population. In the mean time, the Khabur basin is still the area which produces the most of Syria's wheat; you can see on the road a fully loaded truck brings some agricultural products to other Syrian provinces.

To get back to our story... The Euphrates. Many people though the name we have today originated from Persian: Ufratu or maybe Kurdish: Ferhat.. Guess what... nOt really..

In fact the origins of Euphrates is Akkadian, part of the Semitic family branch, the language was widely spoken 200 years before the end of the third Millennium B.C.E. in Southern Mesopotamia. ops, the word in Akkadian is PU-RA-TU.

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Travel & Events

Tags:

• Euphrates
• Furat
• Aleppo
• Syria
• Damascus
• Mesopotamia
• Akkadian
• river
• Tigris