River
Khabur River
486 km from source to mouth · Syria.
SyriaFlows into Euphrates1st longest in Syria
In numbers
Length
486km
Average flow
70m³/s
Basin
37,081km²
Drop
750m
from 942 m to 192 m
Country
1
The journey
From source to mouth
486 km of river and 2 stops on the way: 2 towns and cities on its banks, dams, bridges and the tributaries that feed it.
- 0 kmSourceat 942 m
- 140 kmCeylanpınar31,488 people
- 243 kmAl Ḩasakah422,445 people
- 486 kmEuphratesat 192 m
Water level along the river (RiverATLAS; the height is exaggerated). Towns: GeoNames and Wikidata; bridges, dams and tributaries: Wikidata.
River in Syria and Turkey
At the mouth it carries 70 m³/s on average: an Olympic pool every 36 seconds. It drops from 942 m to 192 m, 1.5 m per kilometre on average. Its basin covers 37,081 km², about the size of GW. 2.2 million people live in it. Highest water: from January to February; lowest: from July to October. No large dam holds it back: it is one of the world's free-flowing rivers.
Where to start
- Al ḨasakahLargest city on its banks · 422,445 people
- Qamishli International Airport (KAC)Nearest airport with scheduled flights, 70 km from the cityCar hire at MQM airport (Mardin)Discover Cars · Affiliate link↗
- From April to May and from October to NovemberThe best months to visit
Khabur River, month by month
Highest water: from January to February
Lowest water: from July to October. Best months to visit: from April to May and from October to November.
From about 9.9 m³/s in the lowest month to 120 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
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The basin
Khabur River: the basin in numbers
36,300 km² of land send their water to this river. This is what lives on it.
- 2.2millionpeople live in the basin
- 61/km²people per km²
- 456maverage altitude of the basin
- 388mmof rain a year (basin average)
- 18.4°Caverage air temperature
- 0.1%covered by lakes
What covers the basin
- 36% Cropland
- 34% Pasture
- 2% 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
Khabur River: what you find on the way
- 2Weirs
- 2Waterfalls
From OpenStreetMap, within 2.1 km of the river. Not mapped is not the same as not there.
Cross-checked with our atlases
Khabur 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.
1mountain at the sourcePeakyas
Mountains at the source (1)
Within 15 km of the source, by Peakyas
- Soğan Hill6.2 km away
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
Khabur River in pictures

Tributaries
Where it flows, and what flows into it
It flows into
EuphratesTributaries (1)
Also: Daysan River
In the same basin
Nearby
Rivers nearby
Where these numbers come from
| Name, length, places | Wikidata (Q685344) · 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.