Saqba


Saqba is a town in southern Syria, administratively part of the Markaz Rif Dimashq District of the Rif Dimashq Governorate, 7 km east of central Damascus. Nearby localities include Jisrin to the southeast, Kafr Batna to the southwest, Hizzah to the southwest and Hamouriyah and Beit Sawa to the north. According to the Syria Central Bureau of Statistics, Saqba had a population of 25,696 in the 2004 census.

History

Study and recitation of the Quran was held in the mosque of Saqba as early as the 12th-century when its khatib was Ahmad ibn Hasan al-Kafatabi. Saqba was visited by Syrian geographer Yaqut al-Hamawi in the early 13th-century, during Ayyubid rule. He noted that it was "a village of the Ghautah of Damascus."

Modern era

In the 1950s Saqba served as a village center of a district which contained seven other villages, with a total population of 12,000. Today, Saqba has become a working-class eastern suburb of Damascus.