Ħal Safi is a village of 2,128 people (March 2013) in the southeast of Malta, near Zurrieq and part of the Luqa airport.
The formation of the village as known today goes back to about seven hundred years. The village of Ħal Safi was surrounded by four other major villages. Farmers and peasants used to meet there for a chat on their way back home from work. Later a niche was erected there,and in time,as people began to settle in the vicinity, a new village started taking shape.
In 1417, the village was already known as Ħal Safi. According to the 1419 records of the Standing Army (id-Dejma), between eighty and ninety people were considered as village residents. The main occupation of the major part of the residents was farming - breeding of sheep and goats and agriculture.
The origin of the village's name cannot be determined conclusively. Some historians have concluded that the name was derived from the PURE (Safi) AIR of the village. Others insisted that it is similar to Ksour Essaf in Tunisia or that the village was named Ħal Safi since none of its residents was contaminated when an epidemic infected the whole country. Both its coat of arms (a horizontal light-blue stripe on a silver background) and its motto (Sine Macula) emphasize the meaning of its name.
(Wiki)
