Interactive map of Afrin's settlements and landmarks
Towns, villages, shrines, historical sites and more
Earlier this month I published an interactive map containing approximately 100 geolocated sites relating to the Turkish and SNA occupation of Afrin. Since then I’ve published a second companion map, this time containing extensive information on the region’s towns and villages, as well as major man-made landmarks.
As an almost entirely Kurdish inhabited area governed for most its history by Turkish and Arab states, place names in Afrin are complicated to say the least. Many villages have multiple versions of their name, with changes stemming from multiple spellings in Kurdish and Arabic, a mix of transliteration or translation between Kurdish, Turkish, and Arabic, the adding or dropping of suffixes (primarily the Turkish -li), or outright renaming, primarily carried out by the Syrian government since 1958 (though this was less common that in the Jazirah region).
Town and village pins on the map are labelled in what appears to be their most common versions in Kurdish and Arabic. While I typically use the English transliteration of Afrin rather than the Kurdish spelling Efrîn as most people don’t know how ‘e’ and ‘î’ are pronounced in Kurdish, I stuck to the Kurdish spellings on this map as to assist people in finding names mentioned in Kurdish media. I have included a brief guide to the Kurdish alphabet pronunciation at left of the map. (and below:)
c = ‘j’
ç = ‘ch’
ş = ‘sh’
x = ‘kh’ (also ‘gh’ in some Arabic loan words)
ê = ‘ay’
î = ee
for example, Şêx village listed above is pronounced just like the original Arabic word “Sh” “ay” “kh”
Each entry also contains alternative names and spellings used, the nahiyah ('sub-district,’ Ku: navçe) it belongs to, the size of the population as recorded in the 2004 Syrian census and the 2007 Civil Registry (if available), as well as a link to the settlement’s profile on local website Tirej Afrin. Underneath this information I’ve also included links to segments from the pre-2018 Kurdish language show Ax u Welat and/or the post-2018 Arabic language show Jawlat highlighting individual settlements (if they exist), in addition to links to local Facebook pages and YouTube videos of the locations (often filmed from car/motorbike or by drone). Towns and villages are marked with white circles, while the subdistrict centers are grey diamonds. Villages historically linked to Afrin but outside its official borders are marked with brown circles.
Other sites included on the map with embedded photographs and links to additional information include train stations (blue circle), rail bridges (blue square), and tunnels (blue line) of Afrin’s segment of the historic Berlin-Baghdad railway, 33 Islamic, Ezidi, and Alevi shrines (green triangle), some of which have been damaged and/or desecrated since Turkish-backed forces captured the region, archaeological sites (purple squares) not including un-excavated tells, major pre-2018 infrastructure (black squares), pre-2012 government and military sites (red squares), and other civilian place names including streets and traffic circles (yellow).
I plan on continuing to update this map as I come across more relevant information in my research.