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.[1] The second largest village, Taldou,[2] had 15,727 inhabitants in 2004 and is located in the outskirts of Houla.[3] 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.[4] Many of the inhabitants of the Houla village cluster are of Turkmen descent.[5] 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.[6] 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").[7]
The Houla massacre (Arabic: مجزرة الحولة) was a mass murder of civilians by Syrian government forces that took place on May 25, 2012, in 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.[8]
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.[9]