Afrin, Syria: History
About 8 km south of the town of Afrin, there are the remains of a Syro-Hittite settlement known as Ain Dara. In a field northwest of the city, a 9th or 8th century BC Luwian stele (named the Afrin stele) was discovered; it is a fragment of a full stele as only the middle section survives, which in turn is damaged with the right side destroyed, taking with it parts of the right edge of the front and left edge of the back. The stele's front shows a part of a relief; a short fringed kilt usually worn by Teshub, the Hittite storm god, is shown. The city fell under the control of the Neo-Assyrian Empire between the 9th and 6th centuries BC, and subsequently under the Neo-Babylonian Empire, Achaemenid Empire and Seleucid Empire
Cyrrhus overlooking the Afrin once served as a military base for the Roman Empire when it conducted campaigns against the Armenian Empire to the north. By the 4th century, it had become an important centre for Christianity with its own bishop.
The Afrin Valley was part of Roman Syria until the Muslim conquest of the Levant in 637. The Afrin was known as Oinoparas (Koine Greek: Οινοπάρας) in the Seleucid era; in the Roman era the name became Ufrenus, whence the Arab vernacular ʿAfrīn, ʿIfrīn, adopted as Kurdish Efrîn.
The area was briefly conquered by the Principality of Antioch but again came under Muslim rule in 1260 following the Mongol invasions. In the Ottoman period, the area was part of the Kilis Province.
Although it is not contiguous with the main area of Kurdish settlement, the Afrin valley seems to have seen Kurdish settlement by at least the 16th-17th centuries, as a British traveller by the name William Biddulph, records in 1599 that a people, called Coords, who "Worship the Devil", dwell in the mountains between İskenderun and Aleppo. It is likely that these were Yezidi Kurds, who have historically been accused of being devil-worshippers by outsiders.
In 18th century, Afrin was referred to as the Sancak of the Kurds in Ottoman documents.
With the drawing of the Syria–Turkey border in 1923, Afrin became detached from Kilis Province and was part of French-administrated Syria (i.e. the State of Aleppo, State of Syria (1924–30), Syrian Republic (1930–58)) and was eventually incorporated in modern Syria at the state's formation in 1961.
The town of Afrin was founded as a market in the 19th century. In 1929, the number of permanent residents was 800, growing to 7,000 by 1968. The town was developed by France under the French mandate of Syria. The main square is Afrin bus station, and the old settlement area stretches northward on the slope of a hill, but more recently habitations have spread to the other side of the river and extend as far to the south-east as the neighboring village of Turandah.
Since the Turkish annexation of Hatay Province in 1939, the Afrin District is now almost surrounded by the Syria–Turkey border, apart from the border with the Azaz District to the east and a short border with the Mount Simeon District to the southeast.
There was an outbreak of civil unrest on 16 March 2004, during which three people were killed by Syrian police. In 1999, the arrest of Kurdish leader Abdullah Öcalan (by the Turkish National Intelligence Organization in Nairobi, Kenya in February 1999) triggered renewed clashes between Kurdish protesters and the police. …