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

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