The Houla Region or Houla Plain ( Arabic : الحولة Al-Ḥūla ) is an area consisting of three villages in the Homs Governorate of central Syria , northwest of the city of Homs . The biggest village in the Houla region had 20,041 inhabitants in 2004 and is called Kafr Laha . The second largest village, Taldou , had 15,727 inhabitants in 2004 and is located in the outskirts of Houla. The third village, Tell Dahab had 12,055 inhabitants in 2004. The settlement is essentially a Turkmen Sunni Muslim town, where Turkish language is widely spoken among its people. Houla is also surrounded by Alawite neighboring villages. Many of the inhabitants of the Houla village cluster are of Turkmen descent.
5-555: Houla was described by 19th-century English scholar Eli Smith as a low-lying tract of land situated at the eastern slope of the Syrian Coastal Mountain Range . The 13th-century Syrian geographer Yaqut al-Hamawi visited al-Houla in 1226 during Ayyubid rule noting that the place belonged to Jund Hims ("military district of Homs"). The Houla massacre ( Arabic : مجزرة الحولة ) was a mass murder of civilians by Syrian government forces that took place on May 25, 2012, in
10-555: The Holy Land in 1838 and 1852, acting as an interpreter for Robinson in his quest to identify and record biblical place names in Palestine, which was subsequently published in Robinson's Biblical Researches in Palestine . He is known for bringing the first printing press with Arabic type to Syria . He went on to pursue the task which he considered to be his life's work: translation of
15-641: The Bible into Arabic. Although he died before completing the task, the work was completed by C. V. Van Dyck of the Syrian Mission and published in 1860 to 1865. Smith married three times. His first wife was Sarah Lanman Huntington Smith , who was also a missionary. She died in 1836. He then married Maria Ward Chapin, who died in 1842. He married Mehitable (Hetty) Simkins (Butler) Smith on October 7, 1846, in Northampton, Massachusetts . His daughter Mary Elizabeth Smith
20-783: The midst of the Syrian Civil War, in the town of Taldou, in the Houla Region. According to the United Nations, 108 people were killed, including 34 women and 49 children. On 29 April 2022, a water canal built by FAO was inaugurated in the region, which would bring water from Taldou dam to the agricultural lands there, after an 11-year hiatus due to the Syria civil war . 34°53′7″N 36°30′42″E / 34.88528°N 36.51167°E / 34.88528; 36.51167 Eli Smith Eli Smith (September 13, 1801 – January 11, 1857)
25-732: Was an American Protestant missionary and scholar. Smith was born in Northford, Connecticut , to Eli and Polly (née Whitney) Smith. He graduated from Yale College in 1821 and from Andover Theological Seminary in 1826. He worked in Malta until 1829, then in company with H. G. O. Dwight traveled through Armenia and Georgia to Persia . They published their observations, Missionary Researches in Armenia , in 1833 in two volumes. Smith settled in Beirut in 1833. Along with Edward Robinson , he made two trips to
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