Overview of Study Area - Historical Land Use/Land Cover Classification Using Remote Sensing - page 38

Chapter 3
Overview of Study Area
3.1 Syria
Present-day Syria (Fig. 3.1 ) forms only a small part of antique geographical Syria.
Until the twentieth century, when western forces started to form the irregular
outlines of the modern countries of Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, and Palestine, the entire
settled land at the eastern ending part of the Mediterranean Sea was named Syria, a
name came from the ancient Greeks to the land connection that links the three
continents of Asia, Africa, and Europe. Historians and political scientists mostly
use the expression ''Greater Syria'' to indicate this region in the pro-state time.
Historically, Greater Syria rarely ruled itself, mainly because of its susceptible
location between the Mediterranean Sea and the desert. As a district between
commonly powerful empires on the north, east, and south, Syria was frequently an
arena for the political fates of dynasties and empires (Kangarani 2006 ).
3.2 The Euphrates River Basin
The name of this river comes from Old Persian and means ''good to cross over''.
The geographical coordinates of the ERB are 3649 0 N, 3802 0 E at the Turkish
border and 3429 0 N, 4056 0 E at the Iraqi border. The ERB (Fig. 3.1 ) includes the
majority of the three governorates of Aleppo, Arraqqa and Deir Azzour. The
variation in altitude is from ca. 520 m at the Turkish border to ca. 185 m at the
Iraqi border. The Euphrates goes up in the mountains of eastern Turkey, and the
sink has high mountains to the north and west and wide plains to the south and
east. Two-thirds of river's course flows throughout the highlands of eastern
Anatolia in Turkey and the valleys of the Syrian and Iraqi flat terrain before down-
warding into the arid plain of Mesopotamia. The Euphrates has its sources in the
eastern highlands of eastern Turkey, between Lake Van and the Black Sea, and is
created by two major tributaries, the Murat and the Karasu. It enters the Syrian
territory at Karkamish, down-tributary from the Turkish town of Birecik. It is then