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Saham al-Jawlan

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Saham al-Jawlan
سحم الجولان
Village
Saham al-Jawlan is located in the Golan Heights
Saham al-Jawlan
Saham al-Jawlan
Saham al-Jawlan is located in Syria
Saham al-Jawlan
Saham al-Jawlan
Coordinates: 32°46′52″N 35°56′5″E / 32.78111°N 35.93472°E / 32.78111; 35.93472
Grid position237/243 PAL
Country Syria
GovernorateDaraa
DistrictDaraa
Subdistrictal-Shajara
Population
 (2004)
 • Total
6,572
Time zoneUTC+3 (EET)
 • Summer (DST)UTC+2 (EEST)

Saham al-Jawlan or Saham el-Golan (Arabic: سحم الجولان, romanized: Saḥam al-Jawlān) is a Syrian village in the Daraa Governorate,[1] in the Hauran region. It had a population of 6,572 in 2004.[2] Most residents work in the cultivation of cereals, olives and vegetables.[1]

History

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Antiquity

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The village has remains dating back to the 4th century.[3] It is also believed to be the biblical city of Golan.[4]

Ottoman period

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In 1596 Saham al-Jawlan appeared in the Ottoman tax registers as part of the nahiya of Jawlan Sharqi in the Qada of Hauran. It had a Muslim population consisting of 22 households and 15 bachelors. A fixed tax−rate of 25% were paid on wheat, barley, summer crops, goats and/or beehives; a total of 4,000 akçe.[5]

In 1884 the American archaeologist Gottlieb Schumacher visited Saham al-Jawlan and described it as a large village of 280 people in the Hauran plain, though administratively attached to the Jawlan (Golan) nahiya centered in Quneitra rather than the Hauran nahiya centered in al-Shaykh Saad.[6] The village was divided into three detached neighborhoods.[7] He noted Saham al-Jawlan's houses were better built than other villages in the Jawlan and were constructed of stone reused from ancient Christian dwellings, rather than the mud houses prevalent in the area.[6]

More than half of the village's dwellings had been abandoned and/or in disrepair by the time of Schumacher's visit. At least sixty or seventy were still inhabited. The streets of the village were wide and mostly straight.[6] Most of the ancient or medieval dwellings and ruins were located in Saham al-Jawlan's northern quarter, including the home of the village sheikh, which had formerly been a Crusader church and remained well-preserved. It was rectangularly-shaped, built of hewn basalt, measured 24 by 10 meters (79 ft × 33 ft) and consisted of a single story with a flat roof. Many of the slabs and lintels from which the structure was built were decorated with crosses, crescents and vegetal motifs.[8] The ancient buildings surrounding the sheikh's home were inhabited by his relatives.[9] In the southeast corner of the village stood a 15 meters (49 ft)-high tower locally called the Jami' or the Madani; it appeared similar to the towers in the Hauran villages of Daraa, Tafas and Nawa.[10]

Despite the village's healthy climate and productive soil, its population was in decline. The vegetable gardens and fruit trees planted along the Wadi al-Shafayl stream west of Saham al-Jawlan were also in a poor state. Schumacher attributed the village's decline to the inhabitants' heavy indebtnedness to creditors, to whom most of the village's farmlands and homes had been pledged as collateral.[11]

Zionist activity

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In 1891, the Agudat Ahim society headquartered in Yekatrinoslav, Russian Empire, acquired 100,000 dunams of land in Saham al-Jawlan for Jewish agricultural settlement.[12] The village lands were purchased from Muhammad Sa'id Pasha Shamdin, a Damascene military official who owned considerable tracts in the Hauran. Muhammad Sa'id had purchased the village cheaply and turned a significant profit in its sale to the Jewish colonization company.[13]

Due to the Ottoman ban on land purchase by Palestinian Jews, the permits were acquired by Baron Edmond de Rothschild.[12] In the Palestine Exploration Fund's visit to the village in 1895, the expedition noted the residents of Saham al-Jawlan protested the sale of their village to the Jewish land company and refused to leave.[14] In 1895, the village of Tiferet Binyamin was established on the land,[12] but the Jews were forced to leave in July 1896, when the Ottomans evicted 17 non-Ottoman families and issued an order that led to the expulsion of all East European Jews from the Golan Heights.[15] A later attempt to settle the site with Syrian Jews, who were Ottoman citizens, was not successful.[16] In 1921–1930, during the French Mandate, the Palestine Jewish Colonization Association (PICA) obtained the deeds to the Rothschild estate in Saham al-Jawlan and continued to manage it, collecting rent from the Arab peasants living there.[17]

Modern era

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From March 2017 to July 2018 Saham al-Jawlan was under the control of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL).[18] On 26 July 2018, the Syrian Army's 4th Armored Division and Tiger Forces following an intense battle with the ISIL-affiliated Jaysh Khaled bin Walid forces regained control of the town Saham al-Jawlan.[19]

See also

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  • Yavne'el, a village in the Galilee settled in 1901 by Jewish families evicted from Saham al-Jawlan who first took refuge in Metula and Rosh Pinna

References

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  1. ^ a b سحم الجولان على الشيوع ومواطنوها محرومون من رخص البناء..? (in Arabic). Thawra alwehda. 20 September 2006. Retrieved 20 January 2011.
  2. ^ General Census of Population and Housing 2004. Syria Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS). Daraa Governorate. (in Arabic)
  3. ^ Dan Urman, Paul Virgil McCracken Flesher (1998). Ancient Synagogues: Historical Analysis and Archaeological Discovery (Studia Post Biblica , No 47) (v. 1 & 2). Brill Academic Publishers. p. 426. ISBN 90-04-11254-5.
  4. ^ Rami Arav, Richard A. Freund (2004). Bethsaida: A City by the North Shore of the Sea of Galilee, vol. 3 (v. 3) (Paperback ed.). Truman State University Press. p. 42. ISBN 1-931112-39-8.
  5. ^ Hütteroth and Abdulfattah, 1977, p. 198.
  6. ^ a b c Schumacher 1886, p. 91.
  7. ^ Schumacher 1886, p. 93.
  8. ^ Schumacher 1886, pp. 93–95.
  9. ^ Schumacher 1886, pp. 97–98.
  10. ^ Schumacher 1886, p. 98.
  11. ^ Schumacher 1886, pp. 91–92.
  12. ^ a b c Katz 1994, p. 20.
  13. ^ Palestine Exploration Fund 1895, pp. 165, 174.
  14. ^ Palestine Exploration Fund 1895, pp. 165, 174.
  15. ^ Gil-Har 1981, p. 306.
  16. ^ Orni & Efrat 1971.
  17. ^ Fishbach 2008, p. 161.
  18. ^ Chris Tomson. "Massive rebel collapse in Daraa as ISIS sweeps through several towns". Al-Masdar News. Archived from the original on 2019-02-10. Retrieved 2017-03-02.
  19. ^ "Syrian Army liberates more than half of ISIL's southwest Syria pocket - map". Al-Masdar. 27 July 2018. Archived from the original on 21 June 2019. Retrieved 27 July 2018.

Bibliography

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