The Ruj Plain, a Drained Lake Basin West of Idlib

A natural basin of 804 square kilometres west of Idlib, ringed by the Harim mountains. The Ghab Plain lies to the south-west and the Amuq Plain to the north-west; the basin sits between Jisr al-Shughur and Armanaz. It was once covered by a lake, which was drained before 1955 through a canal to the Orontes and turned into farmland. Today it is flat, cultivated ground, and beneath it lie 33 settlements spanning the Neolithic to Late Antiquity.

Why the plain was so crowded

Water was plentiful. In antiquity the plain was full of small and medium farming settlements, most likely governed from centres outside it such as Ebla. Surveys have recorded 33 settlements from the Neolithic to Late Antiquity.

Tell Ain el-Kerkh

The best known mound on the plain, also called Tell el-Kerkh. It is one of the key sites for understanding the end of the Pre-Pottery Neolithic B in the Levant and the first pottery phases that followed. Jacques-Claude Courtois excavated it first, in the 1970s, and Takuya Iwasaki of the University of Tsukuba in the 1990s. Iwasaki is also the archaeologist who led the excavation at Tell Mastuma.

Armies and raiders

In 853 BC the Assyrian king Shalmaneser III marched his army across this plain before the battle of Qarqar; Tell Qarqur, the likely site of Qarqar, stands on the edge of the Ghab Plain. In 1098, during the First Crusade, Peter of Roaix and Raymond Pilet d’Alès led foraging raids into the plain. After their defeat at Harran in 1104 the Crusaders gave up most of it, and after their victory at Artah in 1105 they took it back.

How to see the plain

There is no single building to visit. The flatness of the ground and the size of the old lake bed are best understood from a high point on the edge. The mounds rise as low hills among the fields, with no signs or visitor facilities.

How long it takes

Two hours to drive across the plain from one end to the other and look out from its edge.

Before you go

Between 2015 and 2024 the plain lay behind the Jisr al-Shughur-Armanaz front line. Unexploded ordnance is a risk in the fields and on the mounds: stay on the road, and do not climb the mounds without someone local. Roads and checkpoints change; check the current situation before you set out.

Don’t miss

Spring. When crops turn the old lake bed green, the flat floor of the plain stands out clearly from the stony slopes around it, and the outline of the lake becomes readable again.