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Abtaa

أبطع
Abtaa أبطع
Village
	Abtaa
	Coordinates: 32°47′30″N 36°9′9″E / 32.79167°N 36.15250°E
Grid position	258/244
Country	Syria
Governorate	Daraa
District	Daraa
Subdistrict	Da'el
Population (2004)
• Total	14,283
Time zone	UTC+2 (EET)
• Summer (DST)	UTC+3 (EEST)

Abtaa (Arabic: أبطع; transliteration: Ibṭaʿ, also spelled Ibta or Obtei'a) is a town in southern Syria, administratively part of the Daraa District in the Daraa Governorate. Nearby localities include Da'el to the south, Khirbet Ghazaleh to the southeast, Namer to the east, Qarfa to the northeast and al-Shaykh Maskin to the north. According to the Syria Central Bureau of Statistics Abtaa had a population of 14,283.^[1]

History

Abtaa dates back to antiquity, having been mentioned in pre-Islamic Syriac texts.^[2]

In 1596 Abtaa appeared in the Ottoman tax registers as Bita' and was part of the nahiya of Bani Malik al-Asraf in the Hauran Sanjak. It had an entirely Muslim population consisting of 44 households and 20 bachelors. The villagers paid a fixed tax rate of 40% on various agricultural products, including wheat, barley, summer crops, goats and beehives; a total of 5,000 akçe.^[3]

In 1838 it was noted as a Muslim village, situated in the Nukrah district, south of Al-Shaykh Maskin.^[4] In the 1850s the Western traveler Josias Leslie Porter noted that Abtaa contained a number of large "old houses of basalt, and a few broken columns."^[5]

References

^ ^a ^b General Census of Population and Housing 2004. Syria Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS). Daraa Governorate. (in Arabic)
^ Honigman 1995, p. 114.
^ Hütteroth and Abdulfattah, 1977, p. 213.
^ Smith; in Robinson and Smith, 1841, vol 3, Second appendix, B, p. 151
^ Porter, 1858, p. 532