Alma or Elmah () is a village in the Daraa District of the

Daraa Governorate Daraa Governorate ( / ALA-LC: ') is one of the fourteen Governorates of Syria, governorates (provinces) of Syria. It is situated in the south-west of the country and covers an area of 2594 km2. It is bordered by Jordan to the south, Quneitra G ...

Syria Syria, officially the Syrian Arab Republic, is a country in West Asia located in the Eastern Mediterranean and the Levant. It borders the Mediterranean Sea to the west, Turkey to Syria–Turkey border, the north, Iraq to Iraq–Syria border, t ...

. According to the 2004 census, the population was estimated at 6,297 people.Population and Housing Census 2004
It is located near Khirbet Ghazaleh and belongs to a sub-district of a same name.

History

Alma is identified with the ancient

Jewish Jews (, , ), or the Jewish people, are an ethnoreligious group and nation, originating from the Israelites of History of ancient Israel and Judah, ancient Israel and Judah. They also traditionally adhere to Judaism. Jewish ethnicity, rel ...

village of Helam or Alema (), a place in

Gilead Gilead or Gilad (, ; ''Gilʿāḏ'', , ''Jalʻād'') is the ancient, historic, biblical name of the mountainous northern part of the region of Transjordan.''Easton's Bible Dictionary'Galeed''/ref> The region is bounded in the west by the J ...

mentioned in

1 Maccabees 1 Maccabees, also known as the First Book of Maccabees, First Maccabees, and abbreviated as 1 Macc., is a deuterocanonical book which details the history of the Maccabean Revolt against the Seleucid Empire as well as the founding and earliest hi ...

.1 Maccabees, 5:26

Ottoman era

In the Ottoman tax registers of 1596, it was a village named ''Alama'', located the ''

nahiya A nāḥiyah ( , plural ''nawāḥī'' ), also nahiyeh, 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 divisi ...

'' of Bani Malik al-Asraf, Qada of Hauran. It had a population of 12 households and 7 bachelors, all

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

s. They paid a fixed tax-rate of 40% on agricultural products, including wheat (6000

akçe The ''akçe'' or ''akça'' (anglicized as ''akche'', ''akcheh'' or ''aqcha''; ; , , in Europe known as '' asper'') was a silver coin mainly known for being the chief monetary unit of the Ottoman Empire. It was also used in other states includi ...

), barley (1350), summer crops (650), goats and beehives (50), in addition to occasional revenues (10); a total of 8,060

. 1/3 of the revenue went to a

waqf A (; , plural ), also called a (, plural or ), or ''mortmain'' property, is an Alienation (property law), inalienable charitable financial endowment, endowment under Sharia, Islamic law. It typically involves donating a building, plot ...

.Hütteroth and Abdulfattah, 1977, p. 214 In 1838, its inhabitants were again noted as being Muslim, located south of

Al-Shaykh Maskin Al-Shaykh Maskin (), also spelled Sheikh Maskīn, Sheikh Miskeen, is a town in southern Syria, administratively part of the Daraa Governorate, located north of Daraa. Nearby localities include Ibta' and Da'el to the south, Khirbet al-Ghazaleh t ...

.Smith; in Robinson and Smith, 1841, vol 3, Second appendix, B, p
112
/ref>

References

Bibliography

* * {{syria-geo-stub Ancient Jewish settlements of the Golan Heights Villages in Syria Populated places in Daraa District