Yarka

History

Yarka is an ancient village site, where old columns and cisterns have been found. A Greek inscription here dating from the early Christian era was found by Clermont-Ganneau in 1881. During the Crusader era, Yarka was known under the name of Arket. In 1220, Joscelin III's daughter Beatrix de Courtenay and her husband Otto von Botenlauben, Count of Henneberg, sold their land, including Arket, to the Teutonic Knights. In 1517, Yarka was incorporated into the Ottoman Empire after Palestine was captured from the Mamluks. By 1596, Yarka appeared in the Ottoman tax registers as part of the Nahiya of Akka of the Liwa of Safad. It had a population of 174 Muslim households and 24 bachelors. A map by Pierre Jacotin from Napoleon's invasion of 1799 showed the town under the name Hierka. The French explorer Victor Guérin visited Yarka in 1875, and wrote that "cut stones of ancient appearance have been used in building the modern houses. [...] About a hundred cisterns cut in rock, a half of which are no longer used, and the other half serve for the wants of the people, reveal the existence in this place of an ancient locality of some importance." In 1881, the Palestine Exploration Fund's Survey of Western Palestine described Yarka as a well-built stone village inhabited by 400 Druze who grew olives and figs. A population list from about 1887 showed that Yerka had about 1,285 inhabitants; virtually all Druze. In the 1922 census of Palestine conducted by the British Mandate authorities, Yarka had a population of 978 residents; 937 Druze, 26 Muslims, and 15 Christians, where the Christians were 11 Orthodox, 3 Roman Catholics, and 1 Maronite. The population increased in the 1931 census to 1,196; 1,138 Druze, 46 Muslims, and 11 Christians living in a total of 343 houses. According…