River
Khabur
194 km from source to mouth · Turkey and Iraq.
Turkey and IraqFlows into Tigris
In numbers
Length
194km
Average flow
150m³/s
Basin
6,055km²
Drop
1,790m
from 2,128 m to 338 m
Countries
2
The journey
From source to mouth
194 km of river and 6 stops on the way: 4 towns and cities on its banks, dams, bridges and the tributaries that feed it.
- 0 kmSourceat 2,128 m
- 30 kmBeytüşşebap8,354 people
- 84 kmBegova15,000 people
- 157 kmDelal Bridge
- 158 kmZakho219,006 people
- 158 kmZaxo95,052 people
- 169 kmHezil Suyutributary
- 194 kmTigrisat 338 m
Water level along the river (RiverATLAS; the height is exaggerated). Towns: GeoNames and Wikidata; bridges, dams and tributaries: Wikidata.
Tributary of the Tigris
At the mouth it carries 148 m³/s on average: an Olympic pool every 17 seconds. It drops from 2,128 m to 338 m, 9.2 m per kilometre on average. Its basin covers 6,055 km², about the size of PS. 750,000 people live in it. Highest water: from February to March; lowest: from July to October. No large dam holds it back: it is one of the world's free-flowing rivers.
Where to start
- ZakhoLargest city on its banks · 219,006 people
- Şırnak Şerafettin Elçi Airport (NKT)Nearest airport with scheduled flights, 60 km from the cityCar hire in SirnakDiscover Cars · Affiliate link↗
- May and from September to OctoberThe best months to visit
Khabur, month by month
Highest water: from February to March
Lowest water: from July to October. Best months to visit: May and from September to October.
From about 14 m³/s in the lowest month to 270 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: the basin in numbers
6,055 km² of land send their water to this river. This is what lives on it.
- 750,000people live in the basin
- 124/km²people per km²
- 1,420maverage altitude of the basin
- 780mmof rain a year (basin average)
- 13.2°Caverage air temperature
What covers the basin
- 1% Forest
- 20% Cropland
- 8% Pasture
- 4% 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: what you find on the way
- 7Weirs
- 1Waterfalls
From OpenStreetMap, within 1.7 km of the river. Not mapped is not the same as not there.
Cross-checked with our atlases
Khabur 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.
13mountains at the sourcePeakyas
Mountains at the source (13)
Within 15 km of the source, by Peakyas
- Leyzok Tepe7.2 km away2,976m
- Kurt Tepesi14 km away2,637m
- Yurt Dağı12 km away
- Elkiyayla Daglari10 km away
- Damla Dağı8.5 km away
- Bincan Hill6.3 km away
- Ekmala Dağı13 km away
- Calaban Dağı12 km away
5 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
Khabur in pictures




Tributaries
Where it flows, and what flows into it
It flows into
TigrisTributaries (1)
Also: Hezil Suyu
In the same basin
Nearby
Rivers nearby
Where these numbers come from
| Name, length, places | Wikidata (Q607977) · CC0 |
|---|---|
| Course, profile, basin | RiverATLAS v1.0 (HydroATLAS, Linke et al. 2019) · CC BY 4.0 — followed along the river network from the point 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.