Euphrates Dam
dam in Syria
The Euphrates Dam (Arabic: سَدُّ الْفُرَاتِ, romanized: Sadd al-Furāt; Kurdish: Bendava Firatê; Classical Syriac: ܣܟܪܐ ܕܦܪܬ, romanized: Sekro d'Frot), most commonly known as Tabqa Dam; formerly known as al-Thawra Dam during the Ba'athist era, is an embankment dam on the Euphrates, located 40 kilometres (25 mi) upstream from the city of Raqqa in Raqqa Governorate, Syria. The city of Al-Thawrah is located immediately south of the dam. The dam is 60 metres (200 ft) high and 4.5 kilometres (2.8 mi) long and is the largest dam in Syria. Its construction led to the creation of Euphrates Lake, Syria's largest water reservoir. The dam was constructed between 1968 and 1973 with help from the Soviet Union. At the same time, an international effort was made to excavate and document as many archaeological remains as possible in the area of the future lake before they would be flooded by the rising water. When the flow of the Euphrates was reduced in 1974 to fill the lake behind the dam, a dispute broke out between Syria and Iraq (which is downstream) that was settled by intervention from Saudi Arabia and the Soviet Union. The dam was originally built to generate hydroelectric power, as well as irrigate lands on both sides of the Euphrates. The dam has not reached its full potential in either of these objectives.
Project history
In 1927, when Syria was a French mandate, it was proposed to build a dam in the Euphrates near the Syria–Turkey border.
“Euphrates Dam” enters the record as dam in Syria. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Euphrates and Syria can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 1, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q372823. The Library of Congress control number is sh89003092. Authority coordinates are 35.872, 38.567. 2 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1968, 1973, 1974 and 1927.
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This entry incorporates text from “Euphrates Dam” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.