Hibran, also spelled Hebran or Hubran ( ar, حبران, Ḥibrān), is a village in southern

Syria Syria ( ar, سُورِيَا or سُورِيَة, translit=Sūriyā), officially the Syrian Arab Republic ( ar, الجمهورية العربية السورية, al-Jumhūrīyah al-ʻArabīyah as-Sūrīyah), is a Western Asian country loc ...

, administratively part of the

Suwayda Governorate As-Suwayda or Al-Suwayda Governorate ( ar, مُحافظة السويداء / ALA-LC: ''Muḥāfaẓat as-Suwaydā’'') is one of the fourteen governorates (provinces) of Syria. It is the southernmost governorate and has an area of 5,550 km� ...

, located south of

Suwayda , timezone = EET , utc_offset = +2 , timezone_DST = EEST , utc_offset_DST = +3 , coordinates = , grid_position = 296/235 ...

. According to the Syria Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS), Hibran had a population of 3,166 in the 2004 census.

History

Hibran was noted in the 1596 Ottoman

census A census is the procedure of systematically acquiring, recording and calculating information about the members of a given population. This term is used mostly in connection with national population and housing censuses; other common censuses incl ...

under the name of ''Hubran an-Nasara'', being located in the ''

nahiya A nāḥiyah ( ar, , plural ''nawāḥī'' ), also nahiya or nahia, is a regional or local type of administrative division that usually consists of a number of villages or sometimes smaller towns. In Tajikistan, it is a second-level division w ...

'' of ''Bani Nasiyya'' in the Liwa of Hawran. It had a population of 23 households and 14 bachelors; all

Muslim Muslims ( ar, المسلمون, , ) are people who adhere to Islam, a monotheistic religion belonging to the Abrahamic tradition. They consider the Quran, the foundational religious text of Islam, to be the verbatim word of the God of Abrah ...

. They paid a fixed tax-rate of 40% on various agricultural products, including wheat (=1500

akçe The ''akçe'' or ''akça'' (also spelled ''akche'', ''akcheh''; ota, آقچه; ) refers to a silver coin which was the chief monetary unit of the Ottoman Empire. The word itself evolved from the word "silver or silver money", this word is deri ...

), barley (900), summer crops (900), goats and beehives (100); a total of 3,400

. Ottoman tax records indicate the revenues of Hibran were farmed out to Muhammad Alam al-Din, a

Druze The Druze (; ar, دَرْزِيٌّ, ' or ', , ') are an Arabic-speaking esoteric ethnoreligious group from Western Asia who adhere to the Druze faith, an Abrahamic, monotheistic, syncretic, and ethnic religion based on the teachings of ...

emir Emir (; ar, أمير ' ), sometimes transliterated amir, amier, or ameer, is a word of Arabic origin that can refer to a male monarch, aristocrat, holder of high-ranking military or political office, or other person possessing actual or cerem ...

who fled

Mount Lebanon Mount Lebanon ( ar, جَبَل لُبْنَان, ''jabal lubnān'', ; syr, ܛܘܪ ܠܒ݂ܢܢ, ', , ''ṭūr lewnōn'' french: Mont Liban) is a mountain range in Lebanon. It averages above in elevation, with its peak at . Geography The Mount Le ...

in 1667, in 1669–1671. According to the historian Kais Firro, Hibran was one of twenty-eight villages in the

Hauran The Hauran ( ar, حَوْرَان, ''Ḥawrān''; also spelled ''Hawran'' or ''Houran'') is a region that spans parts of southern Syria and northern Jordan. It is bound in the north by the Ghouta oasis, eastwards by the al-Safa (Syria), al-Safa ...

settled by Druze before 1812; in 1838 Hibran was noted as Druse village by

Eli Smith Eli Smith (born September 13, 1801, in Northford, Connecticut, to Eli and Polly (Whitney) Smith, and died January 11, 1857, in Beirut, Lebanon) was an American Protestant missionary and scholar. He graduated from Yale College in 1821 and from Andov ...

. The Druze chieftain

Ismail al-Atrash Ismail al-Atrash () (died November 1869) was the preeminent Druze sheikh (chieftain) of Jabal Hauran, a mountainous region southeast of Damascus, in the mid-19th century. His family had moved to the area in the early 19th century. As relative newc ...

encouraged further Druze migration to Hibran, among a number of other Hauran villages, from Mount Lebanon in the 1850s.

References

Bibliography

* * * * {{As-Suwayda Governorate, suwayda Populated places in as-Suwayda District Druze communities in Syria