Saham al-Jawlan ( ar, سحم الجولان, ''Saḩam al Jawlān''), also known as Saham el-Golan, is a

Syria Syria ( ar, سُورِيَا or سُورِيَة, translit=Sūriyā), officially the Syrian Arab Republic ( ar, الجمهورية العربية السورية, al-Jumhūrīyah al-ʻArabīyah as-Sūrīyah), is a Western Asian country loc ...

n village in the

Daraa Governorate Daraa Governorate ( ar, مُحافظة درعا / ALA-LC: ') is one of the fourteen governorates (provinces) of Syria. It is situated in the south-west of the country and covers an area of 3,730 km2. It is bordered by Jordan to the south, Qune ...

, in the

Hauran The Hauran ( ar, حَوْرَان, ''Ḥawrān''; also spelled ''Hawran'' or ''Houran'') is a region that spans parts of southern Syria and northern Jordan. It is bound in the north by the Ghouta oasis, eastwards by the al-Safa field, to the so ...

region. It had a population of 6,572 in 2004.General Census of Population and Housing 2004
Syria Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS). Daraa Governorate. Most residents work in the cultivation of cereals, olives and vegetables.

History

Antiquity

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

Golan Golan ( he, גּוֹלָן ''Gōlān''; ar, جولان ' or ') is the name of a biblical town later known from the works of Josephus (first century CE) and Eusebius (''Onomasticon'', early 4th century CE). Archaeologists localize the biblical ci ...

Ottoman period

In 1596 Saham al-Jawlan appeared in the Ottoman tax registers as part of the ''

nahiya A nāḥiyah ( ar, , plural ''nawāḥī'' ), also nahiya or nahia, is a regional or local type of administrative division that usually consists of a number of villages or sometimes smaller towns. In Tajikistan, it is a second-level division w ...

'' of Jawlan Sarqi in the Qada of Hauran. It had a

Muslim Muslims ( ar, المسلمون, , ) are people who adhere to Islam, a monotheistic religion belonging to the Abrahamic tradition. They consider the Quran, the foundational religious text of Islam, to be the verbatim word of the God of Abraha ...

population consisting of 22 households and 15 bachelors. A fixed tax−rate of 25% were paid on

wheat Wheat is a grass widely cultivated for its seed, a cereal grain that is a worldwide staple food. The many species of wheat together make up the genus ''Triticum'' ; the most widely grown is common wheat (''T. aestivum''). The archaeological ...

, barley, summer crops, goats and/or beehives; a total of 4,000

akçe The ''akçe'' or ''akça'' (also spelled ''akche'', ''akcheh''; ota, آقچه; ) refers to a silver coin which was the chief monetary unit of the Ottoman Empire. The word itself evolved from the word "silver or silver money", this word is deri ...

Zionist activity

In 1891, the Agudat Ahim society headquartered in Yekatrinoslav,

Russian Empire The Russian Empire was an empire and the final period of the Russian monarchy from 1721 to 1917, ruling across large parts of Eurasia. It succeeded the Tsardom of Russia following the Treaty of Nystad, which ended the Great Northern War. The ...

, acquired 100,000 dunams of land in Saham al-Jawlan for Jewish agricultural settlement. Due to the Turkish ban on land purchase by Palestinian Jews, the permits were acquired by Baron

Edmond de Rothschild Baron Abraham Edmond Benjamin James de Rothschild (Hebrew: הברון אברהם אדמונד בנימין ג'יימס רוטשילד - ''HaBaron Avraham Edmond Binyamin Ya'akov Rotshield''; 19 August 1845 – 2 November 1934) was a French memb ...

. In 1895, the village of Tiferet Binyamin was established on the land,Katz, Yosef
The "business" of settlement: private entrepreneurship in the Jewish settlement of Palestine, 1900–1914
Magnes Press, Hebrew University, 1994. p. 20. but the Jews were forced to leave in July 1896, when the Ottomans evicted 17 non-Turkish families and issued an order that led to the expulsion of all East European Jews from the

Golan Heights The Golan Heights ( ar, هَضْبَةُ الْجَوْلَانِ, Haḍbatu l-Jawlān or ; he, רמת הגולן, ), or simply the Golan, is a region in the Levant spanning about . The region defined as the Golan Heights differs between di ...

. A later attempt to settle the site with Syrian Jews, who were Ottoman citizens, was not successful. In 1921–1930, during the French Mandate, the

Palestine Jewish Colonization Association The Palestine Jewish Colonization Association ( he, חברה להתיישבות יהודית בארץ־ישראל), commonly known by its Yiddish acronym PICA ( he, פיק"א), was established in 1924. It played a major role in purchasing land for ...

(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.M. R. Fishbach, ''Jewish property claims against Arab countries'', Columbia University Press (2008), p.161

Modern era

From March 2017 to July 2018 Saham al-Jawlan was under the control of the

Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant An Islamic state is a state that has a form of government based on Islamic law (sharia). As a term, it has been used to describe various historical polities and theories of governance in the Islamic world. As a translation of the Arabic term ' ...

. On 26 July 2018, the Syrian Army’s 4th Armored Division and

Tiger Forces The 25th Special Mission Forces Division, mostly known by their former name Tiger Forces or Quwwat al-Nimr ( ar, قُوَّات النِّمْر), is an elite formation (special forces unit) of the Syrian Arab Army which functions primarily as ...

following an intense battle with the

ISIS Isis (; ''Ēse''; ; Meroitic: ''Wos'' 'a''or ''Wusa''; Phoenician: 𐤀𐤎, romanized: ʾs) was a major goddess in ancient Egyptian religion whose worship spread throughout the Greco-Roman world. Isis was first mentioned in the Old Kingd ...

-affiliated Jaysh Khaled bin Walid forces managed to regain control of the town Saham al-Jawlan.

References

Bibliography

* * Schumacher (1889)
Across the Jordan; being an exploration and survey of part of Hauran and Jaulan

91
ff

External links

Map of the town
Google Maps
Kafer el Ma-map; 21K
{{Daraa Governorate, daraa Populated places in Daraa District Jewish villages in the Ottoman Empire