Map - Afrin, Syria (‘Afrīn)

Afrin is a city in northern Syria. In the Afrin District, it is part of the Aleppo Governorate. The total population of the district was recorded at 172,095 people, of whom 36,562 lived in the town of Afrin itself.

The town and district are named after the Afrin River. The city is split into two distinct halves by the river. As a result of Operation Olive Branch, the People's Protection Units withdrew after the city's encirclement from Afrin on 17 March 2018, and the Syrian National Army and Turkish Armed Forces captured Afrin the next day, bringing it under the Turkish occupation of northern Syria. While thousands fled as the SDF retreated, an estimated 50,000 to 70,000 people remained in Afrin city after the Turkish and Syrian National Army capture.

After the Syrian National Army took control over the city, more than half of the Kurdish population fled the city. The remaining Kurds have faced harassment by local militant groups, including extortion, detention and kidnapping. Kurds have also experienced seizure and destruction of their land and Kurdish farmers have been discriminated in comparison their Arab neighbors. The Kurdish language has also been restrained.

About 8 km south of the town of Afrin, there are the remains of a Neo-Hittite (Iron Age) settlement known as Tell Ain Dara. In a field northwest of the city, a 9th or 8th century BC Luwian stele (named the Afrin stele) was discovered; it is a fragment of a full stele as only the middle section survives, which in turn is damaged with the right side totally destroyed taking with it parts of the right edge of the front and left edge of the back. The stele's front shows a part of a relief; a short fringed kilt usually worn by the Hittite storm god is shown indicating that the stele was a storm god one.

Cyrrhus overlooking the Afrin River once served as a military base for the Romans conducting campaigns against the Armenian Empire to the north. By the 4th Century it had become an important centre for Christianity with its own bishop.

The Afrin valley was part of Roman Syria until the Muslim conquest of the Levant in 637. The Afrin river was known as Oinoparas (in Greek Οινοπάρας) in the Seleucid era, in the Roman era the name became Ufrenus, whence the Arab vernacular ʿAfrīn, ʿIfrīn, adopted as Kurdish Efrîn.

The area was briefly conquered by the Principality of Antioch, but again came under Muslim rule in 1260 following the Mongol invasions. In the Ottoman period, the area was part of the Kilis Province.

Although it is not contiguous with the main area of Kurdish settlement, the Afrin valley saw Kurdish settlement by 16th-17th centuries.

In 18th century, Afrin was referred to as the Sancak of the Kurds in Ottoman documents.