Yarmouk River in the context of Nahr al-Allan

The Golan Heights, or simply the Golan, is a basaltic plateau at the southwest corner of Syria. It is bordered by the Yarmouk River in the south, the Sea of Galilee and Hula Valley in the west, the Anti-Lebanon mountains with Mount Hermon in the north and Wadi Raqqad in the east. It hosts vital water sources that feed the Hasbani River and the Jordan River. Two thirds of the area was depopulated and occupied by Israel following the 1967 Six-Day War and then effectively annexed in 1981. The international community largely considers the area Israeli-occupied Syrian territory. The United States recognized it as part of Israel in 2019 during the first Trump administration. In 2024, Israel occupied parts of the remaining one third of the area.

The earliest evidence of human habitation on the Golan dates to the Upper Paleolithic period. It was home to the biblical Geshur, and was later incorporated into Aram-Damascus, before being ruled by several foreign and domestic powers, including the Assyrians, Babylonians, Persians, Itureans, Hasmoneans, Romans, Ghassanids, several caliphates, and the Mamluk Sultanate. It was ruled by the Ottoman Empire from the 16th century until its collapse, and subsequently became part of the French Mandate in Syria and the State of Damascus in 1923. When the mandate terminated in 1946, it became part of the newly independent Syrian Arab Republic, spanning about 1,800 km (690 sq mi).

The Ruqqad is a wadi flowing in south-west Syria. It flows into the Yarmouk River, of which it is one of the main tributaries, and forms the topographical eastern boundary of the Golan Heights. It marks the south-west part of the ceasefire line between the Israel-occupied part of the Golan Heights and the Syrian-held part of the region. The Syrian controlled side was occupied by Israel in the 2024 Israeli invasion of Syria.

The Battle of Yarmuk between the Byzantines and Muslims in 636 took place in an area bordered by Wadi ar-Raqqad, close to its junction with the Yarmuk River.

The Zarqa River (Arabic: نهر الزرقاء, Nahr az-Zarqāʾ, lit. "the River of the Blue [City]") is the second largest tributary of the lower Jordan River, after the Yarmouk River. It is the third largest river in the region by annual discharge and its watershed encompasses the most densely populated areas east of the Jordan River. The Zarqa rises in springs near Amman, and flows through a deep and broad valley into the Jordan, at an elevation 1,090 metres (3,580 ft) lower.

At its spring lays 'Ain Ghazal (Arabic: عين غزال), a major archaeological site that dates back to the Neolithic. Archaeological finds along the course of the river indicate the area was rich in flora and fauna in the past.

The Battle of the Yarmuk (also spelled Yarmouk; Arabic: معركة اليرموك) was a major battle between the army of the Byzantine Empire and the Arab Muslim forces of the Rashidun Caliphate, and a crucial point in the Muslim conquest of the Levant. The battle consisted of a series of engagements that lasted for six days in August 636, near the Yarmouk River (called the Hieromykes River by the Greeks), along what are now the borders between Syria and Jordan and Syria and Israel, southeast of the Sea of Galilee. The result of the battle was a decisive Muslim victory that ended Roman rule in Syria after about seven centuries. The Battle of the Yarmuk is regarded as one of the most decisive battles in military history, and it marked the first great wave of early Muslim conquests after the death of the Islamic prophet Muhammad, heralding the rapid advance of Islam into the then-Christian/Roman Levant.

To check the Arab advance and to recover lost territory, Emperor Heraclius had sent a massive expedition to the Levant in May 636. As the Byzantine army approached, the Arabs tactically withdrew from Syria and regrouped all their forces at the Yarmuk plains close to the Arabian Peninsula, where they were reinforced, and defeated the numerically superior Byzantine army. The battle is widely regarded to be Khalid ibn al-Walid's greatest military victory and to have cemented his reputation as one of the greatest tacticians and cavalry commanders in history.

Gadara (Hebrew: גדר, romanized: Geder or Hebrew: גדרה, romanized: Gedera; Greek: Γάδαρα, romanized: Gádara), in some texts Gedaris, was an ancient Hellenistic city in what is now Jordan, for a long time member of the Decapolis city league, a former bishopric and present Latin Catholic titular see.

Its ruins are today located at Umm Qais, a small town in the Bani Kinanah Department and Irbid Governorate in Jordan, near its borders with Israel and Syria. It stood on a hill 378 metres (1,240 ft) above sea level overlooking the Yarmouk River gorge, with the Golan Heights and the Sea of Galilee well visible to the north and northwest.