Hibran, Syria

Hibran, also spelled Hebran or Hubran (حبران), is a village in southern Syria, administratively part of the Suwayda Governorate, located south of Suwayda. 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 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 (=1500  akçe), barley (900), summer crops (900), goats and beehives (100); 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 Druse 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.