Syria boasts a broad spectrum of Middle Eastern landforms, from a coastal plain made fertile by a rich Mediterranean climate to snow-dusted mountains to broad flat deserts. As anywhere, its topography -- interacting with climatic factors -- exerts a major influence on the human population.
Syria's most benevolent region from a climatic perspective is the relatively narrow plain along the eastern edge of the Mediterranean Sea, stretching from the Turkish to the Lebanese borders. That great body of water gives its name to a climate classification -- the Mediterranean climate -- exceedingly rare on a global scale, found most extensively in its namesake region but also in small parts of California, South Africa, Chile and southern Australia. Influenced by marine waters and prevailing winds, such places are unusually mild for their latitude. Most of the annual rainfall -- about 38 inches -- falls in winter and spring. Cities on the coastal plain include the major port of Latakia.
Several mountain ranges run partly within Syria's borders. The Anti-Lebanon Mountains straddle the Syria-Lebanon border and include Syria's loftiest summit, 9,323-foot Mount Hermon. This formidable spine casts a rain shadow, creating semi-arid and arid country in its lee. The Anti-Lebanon Mountains track northeastward into the plateau of central Syria, ultimately ending to the east of Palmyra. Syria's coastal plain is bound at its eastern edge by the Jabal an Nusayriyah, a range averaging close to 4,000 feet in elevation. The western slopes are well-watered by Mediterranean winds; the eastern slopes are drier. The plateaus east of the coastal range are broken by mountains like the Jabal ar Ruwaq.
Steppe and Desert
Much of Syria, set in the rain shadow of coastal mountains and in the subtropical zone of prevailing dry high-pressure systems, is semi-arid steppe and true desert. The Syrian Desert sprawls across portions of Syria, Jordan, Iraq and Saudi Arabia. Smaller designations of drylands in the country include the Hamad Desert, south of the plateau ranges, and the Homs Desert, east of the city of the same name. Southern Syria includes the high lava plains of the Jabal ad Druze, which includes many volcanic cones active during the Pleistocene and Holocene epochs. Some of Syria's great cities, such as Aleppo in the northwest and Damascus in the lee of the Anti-Lebanon Mountains, lie on the steppes east of the coastal country.
Syria's most important river is the Euphrates, which rises in the highlands of Turkey and drains southeastward into Iraq to its great confluence with the Tigris above the Persian Gulf. Ephemeral streams called wadis drain into the Euphrates off the dry steppe and deserts of central and southern Syria, while more substantial rivers like the Khabur, rising in Turkey, feed it from the east. Oases in the Syrian drylands -- places where springs or other water sources nourish groves of palms and greenery in the sere environment -- have long been important to nomadic herders and sedentary inhabitants alike. Damascus marks the site of the Al Ghutah Oasis, formed by the Barada River that drops from the Anti-Lebanon Mountains into the desert eastward.