Azaz (A'zaz) lies in the north of Aleppo Governorate, roughly thirty kilometres north of Aleppo city and close to the Syrian–Turkish border. It is the administrative seat of A'zaz District and of the sub-district that carries its name. At the 2004 census the Syria Central Bureau of Statistics recorded 31,623 residents in the city itself, within a district of 251,769 people; the sub-district around it counted 47,570 in the same census. No more recent official count for the city has been published.

The town stands on the open plain that carries the road running north from Aleppo to the border, and that position has shaped what it does. It has served as the market town for the grain, olives and livestock of the villages around it, as a stopping point for cross-border traffic and the small trading and workshop economy that grows around such traffic, and as a district seat providing administration, schooling and health services to dozens of surrounding localities.

The most precise institutional measurement published for the city itself follows the earthquake of 6 February 2023. UNOSAT, the United Nations Satellite Centre, analysed a Pléiades very-high-resolution satellite image acquired on 9 February 2023 and, within an analysed area of about 30 km², identified 18 damaged structures and 73 potentially damaged (UNOSAT, 2023).

UNOSAT states that this analysis is preliminary and has not been validated in the field, and it registers only what is visible from above within that footprint. It is therefore a marker of earthquake impact on the built fabric of the city, not a full account of the condition of housing, networks or public buildings.

Beyond that assessment we could not verify any institutional, city-level survey of Azaz's housing stock, water and power networks or public facilities, and we found no published institutional record of completed reconstruction works in the city. Figures published for A'zaz District or for Aleppo Governorate as a whole cover a far larger area and should not be read as figures for the city.