In 1596, it was named as a village, ''al-Ma'raka
, in the Ottoman nahiya (subdistrict) of Tibnin under the liwa''' (district) of
Safad, with a population of 119 households and 3 bachelors, all Muslim. The villagers paid a fixed tax rate of 25% on agricultural products, such as
wheat,
barley, olive trees, fruit trees, cotton, goats and beehives, in addition to occasional revenues; a total of 13,350
akçe. In 1875
Victor Guérin found that it had 700
Metawileh inhabitants. He further noted: "Here are uprights and
lintels of door with cut stones, apparently ancient; and in a small
mosque, built of regular blocks probably taken from an old church, are several fragments of monolithic
columns.'" In 1881, the
PEF's
Survey of Western Palestine (SWP) described it as: "A village, built of stone, containing about 400
Metawileh, on flat top of high ground, surrounded by gardens, olives, figs, palms, and arable land. There is a spring and five
cisterns." On 28 June 1984 the Israeli army surrounded the town and began house to house searches. 119 men, aged between 13 and 60, were taken away as prisoners for further interrogation. At the time it was estimated that Maarakah had a population of 13,000. On 4 March 1985, during the
Israeli occupation of Southern Lebanon, an
explosion destroyed a mosque killing local resistance leader, Mohammed Saad. At least 15 people were killed in the explosion. ==Demographics==