Hibran, Suwayda


Hibran, is a village in southern Syria, administratively part of the Suwayda Governorate, located south of Suwayda. According to the Syria Central Bureau of Statistics, Hibran had a population of 3,166 in the 2004 census. Its inhabitants are predominantly Druze.

History

Hibran was noted in the 1596 Ottoman census under the name of Hubran an-Nasara, being located in the nahiya of Bani Nasiyya in the Liwa of Hawran. It had a population of 23 households and 14 bachelors; all Muslim. They paid a fixed tax-rate of 40% on various agricultural products, including wheat, barley, summer crops, goats and beehives ; a total of 3,400 akçe.
Ottoman tax records indicate the revenues of Hibran were farmed out to Muhammad Alam al-Din, a Druze emir who fled Mount Lebanon in 1667, in 1669–1671.
According to the historian Kais Firro, Hibran was one of twenty-eight villages in the Hauran settled by Druze before 1812; in 1838 Hibran was noted as Druze village by Eli Smith.
The Druze chieftain Ismail al-Atrash encouraged further Druze migration to Hibran, among a number of other Hauran villages, from Mount Lebanon in the 1850s.

Religious buildings