Samaqiyat

Al-Samaqiyat, also spelled al-Summaqiyat or Smaqiyat (Arabic: السماقيات), is a village in southern Syria, administratively part of the Daraa Governorate, located east of Daraa and south of Bosra. Other nearby localities include al-Mataaiya to the west and Samad to the northeast. According to the Syria Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS), Samaqiyat had a population of 511 in the 2004 census.^[1]

Al-Samaqiyat السماقيات
Village
Al-Samaqiyat
Coordinates: 32°25′46″N 36°23′38″E
Country	Syria
Governorate	Daraa
District	Daraa
Subdistrict	Bosra al-Sham
Population  (2004 census)[1]
• Total	511
Time zone	UTC+2 (EET)
• Summer (DST)	UTC+3 (EEST)

History

Samaqiyat had been an abandoned village as of 1890, but was resettled by Christians by 1895, when the village had about eleven families.^[2][3] The population grew to twenty-five families by 1905.^[3] Because its location in the Hamad desert steppe, its land was dry. It also experienced raids by the Druze from the neighboring Jabal al-Druze mountain and by the Bedouin tribes active in the area.^[3] The Bedouin overran the area surrounding the village in 1909.^[3] Since the Ottoman era, the village has been dominated by the Miqdad clan.^[4]

References

1. General Census of Population and Housing 2004. Syria Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS). Daraa Governorate. (in Arabic)
2. Schumacher, 1897, pp. 150-153
3. Lewis, Norman (2000). "The Syrian Steppe during the Last Century of Ottoman Rule: Hawran and the Palmyrena". In Mundy, Martha; Musallam, Basim (eds.). The Transformation of Nomadic Society in the Arab East. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp. 40–41. ISBN 978-0521770576.
4. Batatu, H. (1999). Syria's Peasantry, the Descendants of Its Lesser Rural Notables, and Their Politics. Princeton University Press. p. 24. ISBN 0691002541.

Bibliography

• Schumacher; et al. (1897). "Der Südliche Basan". Zeitschrift des Deutschen Palästina-Vereins. 19–20: 65–227.