Barbara was a Palestinian Arab village in the Gaza Subdistrict located 17 km northeast of Gaza city, in the vicinity of modern Ashkelon. It had an entirely Arab population of 2,410 in 1945. The village consisted of nearly 14,000 dunums of which approximately 12,700 dunums was able to be cultivated. It was captured by Israel during the 1948 Arab–Israeli War.

Gaza Sanjak, known in Arabic as Bilād Ghazza, was a sanjak of the Damascus Eyalet, Ottoman Empire centered in Gaza, northwards up to the Nahr al-‘Awja/the Yarkon River. In the 16th century it was divided into nawahi : Gaza in the south and Ramla in the north along the Nahr Rūbīn/Wādī al-Ṣarār.