River
Afrin River
131 km from source to mouth · Turkey and Syria.
Turkey and SyriaFlows into Orontes River
In numbers
Length
131km
Average flow
61m³/s
Basin
1,717km²
Drop
573m
from 651 m to 78 m
Countries
2
The journey
From source to mouth
131 km of river and 1 stops on the way: 1 towns and cities on its banks, dams, bridges and the tributaries that feed it.
- 0 kmSourceat 651 m
- 62 km‘Afrīn48,693 people
- 131 kmOrontes Riverat 78 m
Water level along the river (RiverATLAS; the height is exaggerated). Towns: GeoNames and Wikidata; bridges, dams and tributaries: Wikidata.
River
At the mouth it carries 61 m³/s on average: an Olympic pool every 41 seconds. It drops from 651 m to 78 m, 4.4 m per kilometre on average. Its basin covers 1,717 km², about the size of GP. 876,000 people live in it. Highest water: from January to February; lowest: from July to October. Dams and reservoirs hold back a large share of its water (10% of a year's flow).
Where to start
- ‘AfrīnLargest city on its banks · 48,693 people
- Aleppo International Airport (ALP)Nearest airport with scheduled flights, 49 km from the cityCar hire at HTY airport (Antakya)Discover Cars · Affiliate link↗
- From April to June and from September to OctoberThe best months to visit
Afrin River, month by month
Highest water: from January to February
Lowest water: from July to October. Best months to visit: from April to June and from September to October.
From about 8.6 m³/s in the lowest month to 160 m³/s in the highest. An estimate: the monthly flow is modelled from the lowest and highest months of WaterGAP (RiverATLAS, 1971–2000) and the rain and snow along the river (WorldClim). Dams change the real rhythm. The chip is the average air temperature; below it, the month's rain.
Plan the trip
Plan the trip: boat trips, a bed by the river, a car
Some links above are affiliate links: if you book through them we may earn a commission, at no extra cost to you. It never changes what the data on this page says.
The basin
Afrin River: the basin in numbers
6,146 km² of land send their water to this river. This is what lives on it.
- 876,000people live in the basin
- 142/km²people per km²
- 511maverage altitude of the basin
- 668mmof rain a year (basin average)
- 16.6°Caverage air temperature
- 0.3%covered by lakes
- 0.2km³held in reservoirs
What covers the basin
- 5% Forest
- 53% Cropland
- 15% Pasture
- 5% Towns and cities
RiverATLAS (HydroATLAS v1.0, CC BY 4.0): land cover, people, protected areas, glaciers and dams over the whole basin upstream of the mouth.
Along the river
Afrin River: what you find on the way
- 1Weirs
- 1WaterfallsShalalat kamrok
From OpenStreetMap, within 1.7 km of the river. Not mapped is not the same as not there.
Cross-checked with our atlases
Afrin River in our other atlases
What our sister atlases know about the waterfalls on this river, the lakes it flows through, the beaches at its mouth, the mountains where it rises and the islands off its mouth.
17mountains at the sourcePeakyas
Mountains at the source (17)
Within 15 km of the source, by Peakyas
- Kafdağı13 km away
- Palazlı Tepe14 km away
- Kartal Dağı9.4 km away
- Belen Hill9.6 km away
- Kızıl Hill13 km away
- Kara Hill15 km away
- Ellez Hill12 km away
- Yukarıbağ Hill11 km away
9 more on PeakyasOpen Peakyas ↗
From space
The source and the mouth, seen from orbit


Sentinel-2 cloudless 2016 by EOX IT Services GmbH (contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data 2016), CC BY 4.0. The glowing line is the river as drawn by RiverATLAS.
Photos
Afrin River in pictures
Tributaries
Where it flows, and what flows into it
It flows into
Orontes RiverNearby
Rivers nearby
Where these numbers come from
| Name, length, places | Wikidata (Q387842) · CC0 |
|---|---|
| Course, profile, basin | RiverATLAS v1.0 (HydroATLAS, Linke et al. 2019) · CC BY 4.0 — followed from the source to the mouth given by Wikidata |
| Flow | WaterGAP (RiverATLAS), 1971–2000 · CC BY 4.0 |
| Climate along the river | WorldClim (RiverATLAS), 1970–2000 · CC BY 4.0 |
| Towns, bridges, dams | Wikidata · CC0; GeoNames · CC BY 4.0 |
| Along the river | © OpenStreetMap contributors · ODbL |
| Images | EOX Sentinel-2 cloudless 2016 · CC BY 4.0; Wikimedia Commons |
| Our other atlases | Peakyas — Wikidata · CC0; © OpenStreetMap contributors · ODbL; GeoNames · CC BY 4.0; HydroLAKES · CC BY 4.0; NOAA OISST |
Every source and licence is on the data sources page.
The family
Do you prefer beaches, lakes, mountains, waterfalls, islands, rivers or canyons?
Same idea, other landscapes: field atlases built on open data, month by month, in seven languages.


