The Balikh river runs from north to
south, in between the middle Euphrates to the west and the Khabur to the east, running roughly parallel with both of them. (The Euphrates occupies the incised valley
at the left margin of the image: the various tributaries of the Khabur are
evident on the right-hand edge.) In Turkey, the Balikh occupies the
fertile plain between Urfa and Harran, below which the plain narrows as the
river enters Syria, where it flows through more open but drier terrain, within
which occupation is more closely confined to areas immediately adjoining the
river. The well-watered northern parts of the Balikh valley form a
stepping-stone in the east-west corridor of the northern Fertile Crescent,
between the other two rivers, as well as a north-south axis in its own right.
The density of large tells in the
Harran plain (Harran is the prominent tell-topped hill in the lower-middle of
the image) is evident in this SRTM terrain-model, equivalent to c. 1:200,000.
The same area with draped Landsat 7
imagery.
The area immediately to the west of
Harran (this site is indicated by the thin black square in the middle of the
right margin of each image),
viewed at maximum resolution (equivalent to c. 1:50,000); left in a simple
terrain model; right with draped topographic map (1:100,000).
A larger area of the Plain, shown
with draped topographic map. The railway follows the frontier with Syria, which
is the roughly horizontal double line at the base of the map.
Occasional Papers (2009-)
Site Visualisations
