The Queiq River

Aleppo has a river. Most visitors leave without seeing it. The Queiq runs 129 kilometres and is endorheic: it never reaches the sea but spills into the plains and swamps south of the city and ends there. Inside Aleppo it runs at the bottom of a concrete channel. There is not much water in it. It is still the answer to why the city stands exactly here.

Where it comes from and where it goes

It rises in the Taurus mountains and runs south parallel to the Euphrates. From there it crosses the Aintab plateau, follows the western rim of the Matah depression, passes through Aleppo and ends in the plains beyond. The name comes from the croaking of frogs, which filled its banks. The Greeks knew it as the Belus. In English it has also been called the Aleppo River.

The Romans brought the water

Nineteenth-century surveys showed that the water comes from copious springs near Aintab, and that those springs would naturally drain into the Euphrates basin. The Romans turned the water south through aqueducts instead and gave it to Aleppo, then a city on the Silk Road. The aqueducts feed a natural wadi, which after joining the Akpinar stream near Kilis carries the water down to Aleppo and to ancient Qinnasrin. The valley has been settled for thousands of years and is known for its flint working and pottery.

Why the river dried up

The Queiq dried out completely in the late 1960s, because of irrigation schemes on the Turkish side of the border. Water from the Euphrates has since been diverted to revive the river and the farming south of the city. The Tal Hasel pumping station was opened for that purpose in 2008, closed during the war, and was repaired and put back into service in July 2022. Average rainfall in the region is 325 millimetres a year, and the water table keeps falling under heavy pumping.

Why the name came up in 2013

Between January and March 2013, in the period when the war had cut Aleppo in two, more than 100 bodies were recovered from the river at Bustan al-Qasr. The episode made the name Queiq known well beyond Aleppo, and a large share of searches for the river still lead there.

Where to see it in the city

The easiest place is Aleppo Public Park, where the river cuts straight across. The second is the channel in the city centre. A narrow strip of water between stone walls, with yellow flowering weeds filling the bed in spring. The gardens that gave Bab al-Jinan its name were on this bank too. The gardens are gone and so is the gate; the river is still here.