Qarfa

Qarfa
قرفــا
Village
Qarfa
Coordinates: 32°48′55″N 36°12′5″E / 32.81528°N 36.20139°E / 32.81528; 36.20139
Grid position 262/247 PAL
Country  Syria
Governorate Daraa Governorate
District Izra District
Nahiyah Al-Shaykh Maskin
Population (2004 census)[1]
  Total 4,885
Time zone EET (UTC+2)
  Summer (DST) EEST (UTC+3)

Qarfa (Arabic: قرفــا, also spelled Garfa or Kurfa) is a village in southern Syria, administratively belonging to the Izra' District of the Daraa Governorate. Nearby localities include al-Shaykh Maskin to the northwest, Izra to the northeast, Maliha al-Atash to the east, Namir to the southeast, Khirbet Ghazaleh to the south and Abtaa to the southwest. In the 2004 census by the Central Bureau of Statistics, al-Hirak had a population of 20,760.[1] Its inhabitants are predominantly Muslims.[2]

History

Inside a private house in Qarfa a Greek inscription dedicating a church to Saint Bacchus was discovered. The inscription was dated to 589-590 CE and written on a stone lintel decorated with a cross.[3]

In 1596, Qarfa appeared in Ottoman tax registers as a village in the Nahiya of Bani Malik al-Asraf in the Hawran Qada. It had a population of 42 Muslim households and 15 bachelors. It paid taxes on wheat, barley, summercrops, and goats or beehives.[4]

On 13 August 1962 a tribal feud in Qarfa between the al-Makayed and al-Manasser clans resulted in five people being wounded. The fighting was a result of old rivalries. Security forces arrested several people from the town and the wounded were evacuated to the hospital.[5] During the ongoing Syrian Civil War, which began in 2011, opposition rebels from the Free Syrian Army attacked a petrol station in Qarfa, killing a relative of high-ranking government official Rustum Ghazaleh in early January 2013.[6]

References

  1. 1 2 General Census of Population and Housing 2004. Syria Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS). Daraa Governorate. (Arabic)
  2. Smith; in Robinson and Smith, 1841, vol 3, Second appendix, B, p. 152
  3. Chaniotis, 2003, p. 521.
  4. Hütteroth and Abdulfattah, 1977, p. 212
  5. Mideast Mirror. 14. Arab News Agency. (1962). Page 20.
  6. FSA kills relative of Syrian security chief in Deraa. Al Arabiya. 2013-01-05.

Bibliography

External links

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