was abandoned. In 1868 a travel handbook reported that the site was a "ruined village of about 80 or 100 houses" and that a large caravanserai also stood in ruins. Semi-nomadic pastoral groups such as the Arab Al Fadl and Banu Nu'aym tribes and several Turkmen tribes grazed their flocks in Quneitra's rocky lands. In 1873, a group of Circassians from Sivas in Anatolia settled in Quneitra. This initial group did not cultivate the area for a number of years. A second wave of Circassians, numbering about 2,000, arrived in the Golan in 1878 via Acre after fleeing Bulgaria due to the Russo-Turkish War. Along with Quneitra, they settled or built number of other villages in the vicinity. The Circassians began farming the area and each family was given title to 70 to 130 dunams of land by the government depending on the family's size. The Ottomans encouraged Circassian settlement in the Golan as a means to drive a wedge between the frequently rebellious Druze villages of Mount Hermon and those in Jabal Hauran. The Circassians of Quneitra engaged in sustained conflicts with the Druze and the Al Fadl through the remainder of the 19th century. Modern Quneitra grew around the nucleus of the old Ottoman caravanserai, which had been built using the stones of a ruined ancient settlement. By the mid-1880s, Quneitra had become the main city and seat of government of the Golan. Gottlieb Schumacher wrote in 1888 that it "consists of 260 buildings, which are mostly well and carefully constructed of basalt stones, and contains, excluding the soldiers and officials, 1,300 inhabitants, principally Circassians." Circassians moved away from the Golan began after the Six-Day War and again after the fall of the Soviet Union. During World War I, the Australian Mounted Division and 5th Cavalry Division defeated the Ottoman Turks at Quneitra on 29 September 1918, before they took Damascus (see also Battle of Megiddo (1918)). Second World War Quneitra saw several battles during the Syria-Lebanon Campaign of the Second World War, including the Battle of Damascus and Battle of Kissoué. Arab-Israeli conflict When the modern states of Syria and Israel gained their independence from France and Britain respectively after the Second World War, Quneitra gained a new strategic significance as a key road junction some from the border. It became a prosperous market town and military garrison, with its population tripling to over 20,000 people, predominately