Earthen Domes in Northern Syria. Ar-Raqqah, Aleppo, Idlib

The area of earthen dome houses is extended from Ar-Raqqah city, belonging to ‘Al-Jazira and Euphrates Region’ (from the east), passing through Aleppo region to Idlib city (in the west), known as ‘Aleppo Hadaba (hill) Region’, covers two of eight geographical regions of Syria, which is divided into fourteen Administrative Regions. For analyzing the mud architecture distribution in Syria, it is necessary to outline briefly about the relation between rainfall and number of existent human settlements or villages in each geographic region: these important data and information illustrate the relation between them under the effect of geographic division, and we can imagine the probable effect of this relation on the distribution of earthen architecture in whole Syria. The minimum density of Population distribution is found in Syrian desert region, the maximum one is noticed in Syrian coast and coastal mountains, and also that Al-Jazira Region has the higher number of human settlements and villages (2,175 ones) while the desert region has only 20 aggregations according to the geographic information of 1990. From the other hand we can mark the relation between the rainfall and the number of aggregations through the following diagram, and notice that this relation is defined by many factors: the different rainfall registrations of various stations spread on the area of each region, the proper region climate and its geological and morphological characters.