Habaka () is a small hill town in northern

Jordan Jordan, officially the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, is a country in the Southern Levant region of West Asia. Jordan is bordered by Syria to the north, Iraq to the east, Saudi Arabia to the south, and Israel and the occupied Palestinian ter ...

, located 75 km north of the capital

Amman Amman ( , ; , ) is the capital and the largest city of Jordan, and the country's economic, political, and cultural center. With a population of four million as of 2021, Amman is Jordan's primate city and is the largest city in the Levant ...

, and about 5 km south of

Irbid Irbid (), known in ancient times as Arabella or Arbela (Άρβηλα in Ancient Greek language, Ancient Greek), is the capital and largest city of Irbid Governorate. It has the second-largest metropolitan population in Jordan after Amman, with a ...

. The region has a very fertile soil along with suitable

climate Climate is the long-term weather pattern in a region, typically averaged over 30 years. More rigorously, it is the mean and variability of meteorological variables over a time spanning from months to millions of years. Some of the meteoro ...

allows the growing of a wide variety of high-quality crops. The main products are olives and grapes. There is a substantial area of pine forests on the hills that are extending from

Ajloun Ajloun (, ''‘Ajlūn''), also spelled Ajlun, is the capital town of the Ajloun Governorate, a hilly town in the north of Jordan, located 76 kilometers (around 47 miles) north west of Amman. It is noted for its impressive ruins of the 12th-centur ...

. Habaka had a population of 4114 in 2015.

History

Recent discoveries in the area of

Tell Johfiyeh Tell Johfiyeh (2200 BC) is an archeological site in the village of Johfiyeh, Jordan, which dates back to the Iron Age. It is at the northern edge of the modern village of Johfiyeh, 7.5 km south-west of Irbid, in an intensive agriculture area. ...

, which is in

Johfiyeh Johfiyeh () also spelled Johfiyah, Juhfiyah or Juhfiyeh, is a historical village in northern Jordan, located 80 kilometers north of the capital Amman and about 7.5 km southwest of the city Irbid. It had a population of 4251 and the most popul ...

near Habaka, goes back to the Iron Age. The town was home to Islamic scholar Ali bin Ziadah bin Abd Alrahman Alhabaki Alshafie (Arabic: علي بن زيادة بن عبد الرحمن الحبكي الشافعي), died in 1364. In 1596, during the

Ottoman Empire The Ottoman Empire (), also called the Turkish Empire, was an empire, imperial realm that controlled much of Southeast Europe, West Asia, and North Africa from the 14th to early 20th centuries; it also controlled parts of southeastern Centr ...

, Habaka was noted in the

census A census (from Latin ''censere'', 'to assess') is the procedure of systematically acquiring, recording, and calculating population information about the members of a given Statistical population, population, usually displayed in the form of stati ...

as being located in the ''

nahiya A nāḥiyah ( , plural ''nawāḥī'' ), also nahiyeh, nahiya or nahia, is a regional or local type of administrative division that usually consists of a number of villages or sometimes smaller towns. In Tajikistan, it is a second-level divisi ...

'' of '' Bani al-Asar'' in the

Liwa of Hawran The Hauran Sanjak (, ) was a sanjak of the Ottoman Empire, spanning the southern areas of Ottoman Syria, located in modern-day Syria and Jordan. The city of Daraa was the sanjak's capital. The sanjak had a population of 182,805 in 1914. Subdistr ...

. It had a population of 18 households and 11 bachelors, all

Muslim Muslims () are people who adhere to Islam, a Monotheism, monotheistic religion belonging to the Abrahamic religions, Abrahamic tradition. They consider the Quran, the foundational religious text of Islam, to be the verbatim word of the God ...

. They paid a fixed tax-rate of 25% on various agricultural products which includes wheat, barley, summer crops, vineyards/fruit trees, goats and beehives in addition to occasional revenues. The total comes to 8,000

akçe The ''akçe'' or ''akça'' (anglicized as ''akche'', ''akcheh'' or ''aqcha''; ; , , in Europe known as '' asper'') was a silver coin mainly known for being the chief monetary unit of the Ottoman Empire. It was also used in other states includi ...

. In 1838 Habaka was noted as being ruined/deserted. The Jordanian census of 1961 found 428 inhabitants in Habaka.

Demographics

(1994 Est.) *Population: 1775 *Male: 2500 *Female: 3254 *Families: 450 *Buildings: 500 *Residential units: 326 *Schools: 3

References

Bibliography

* * *

External links

*
Greater Irbid Municipality
* Populated places in Irbid Governorate {{Jordan-geo-stub