Afrin (; ) is a city in northern Syria. In the Afrin District, it is part of the Aleppo Governorate. The total population of the district was recorded at 172,095 people, of whom 36,562 lived in the town of Afrin itself.
The town and district are named after the Afrin River. The city is split into two distinct halves by the river. As a result of Operation Olive Branch, the People's Protection Units withdrew after the city's encirclement from Afrin on 17 March 2018, and the Syrian National Army and Turkish Armed Forces captured Afrin the next day, bringing it under the Turkish occupation of northern Syria. While thousands fled as the SDF retreated, an estimated 50,000 to 70,000 people remained in Afrin city after the Turkish and Syrian National Army capture.
History
About 8 km south of the town of Afrin, there are the remains of a Neo-Hittite (Iron Age) settlement known as Tell 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 totally 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 the Hittite storm god is shown indicating that the stele was a storm god one.
Cyrrhus overlooking the Afrin River once served as a military base for the Romans conducting 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 river was known as Oinoparas (in 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 Iskenderun 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.
Modern era
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 triggered renewed clashes between Kurdish protesters and the police.
Syrian Civil War
During the Syrian Civil War, Syrian government forces withdrew from the city in the summer of 2012. The Popular Protection Units (YPG) took control of the city soon afterward.
Afrin Canton as a de facto autonomous part was declared on 29 January 2014, the town of Afrin being the administrative center. The assembly elected Hêvî Îbrahîm Mustefa prime minister, who later appointed Remzi Şêxmus and Ebdil Hemid Mistefa to work as deputies.