Kfar Silwan was the ancestral village of the
Abu'l-Lama muqaddams (local chiefs), a
Druze family affiliated with
Fakhr al-Din II (), which later moved to
Mtain and
Salima and embraced
Maronite Christianity. The village later served as the headquarters of the Banu Hatum, a Druze clan. From Kafr Silwan, the Banu Hatum led a peasants' revolt in the early 1790s against the taxation attempts of
Bashir Shihab II, the paramount tax farmer of
Mount Lebanon and its environs, forcing his troops to withdraw from the
Matn area. In 1794 the revolt was suppressed by the forces of the
Ottoman governor
Jazzar Pasha, the village was destroyed and part of its inhabitants, including the Banu Hatum, migrated to the
Hauran. In 1838,
Eli Smith noted
Kefr Selwan as a village located in
Aklim el-Metn; East of Beirut. ==See also==