Roman and Byzantine periods During the
Roman and
Byzantine periods (1st–7th centuries CE), Nawa, then known as
Naveh or '
Neve,' had a large
Jewish population. The city is mentioned in ancient Jewish sources such as in the 3rd-century
Mosaic of Rehob and the
Midrash Rabba under the Hebrew names נוה (Neve) and נינוה (Ninveh).
Eusebius, a 4th-century Christian scholar, referred to it as
Ninveh, describing it as a "city of Jews." The city was also noted by the
Bordeaux Pilgrim, a Christian traveler who passed through in 333–334 CE, who referred to it as
Neve. The city is mentioned as 'Neve' in the
Antonine Itinerary. The bishopric of Neve was a
suffragan of
Bostra, the
metropolitan see of the
Arabia Petraea province. Two of Neve's bishops are known: Petronius, who attended the
Council of Ephesus in 431 and Jobius, who was present at the
Council of Chalcedon in 451. The Diocese of Neve is noticed in the
Notitia episcopatuum of the patriarchate of
Antioch in the 6th century ("Échos d'Orient", X, 145). Nawa was mentioned by
George of Cyprus ("Descriptio orbis romani", ed.
Heinrich Gelzer, 54) in the 7th century. The Hauran was dominated by the
Ghassanids, the lead
Arab foederati (tribal confederates) of the Byzantines, during the 6th and 7th centuries. They had their principal base at
Jabiya, in Nawa's immediate vicinity. The historians Clive Foss and
Irfan Shahid suggested that the Ghassanids left some architectural traces in Nawa, namely an audience chamber in one of the town's ruined palaces (which parallels that of
al-Mundhir III outside
Resafa) and churches.
Early Muslim period Nawa came under Muslim rule following the decisive
Battle of Yarmouk in 636. Under the Islamic
caliphates of the
Rashidun,
Umayyads,
Abbasids, and
Fatimids (7th–11th centuries), Nawa was a part of
Jund Dimashq (the military district of Damascus) and the principal city of the
Hauran. It was destroyed in an earthquake in 749, according to the chronicler
Michael the Syrian.
Al-Mas'udi wrote in 943 that a
mosque dedicated to
Job was located from Nawa. In 985 the Jerusalemite geographer
al-Muqaddasi described Nawa as the principal city of the districts of
Bathaniyya (the Hauran plain) and
Hawran (the
Jabal al-Druze) of Jund Dimashq, and that its land were rich in grain.
Ayyubid and Mamluk periods By the 13th century, its status had declined. The Christian pilgrim
Thietmar passed through Nawa in 1217–1218, during
Ayyubid rule (1180s–1260s) and noted that it was in a ruined state and "inhabited by
Saracens". The Syrian geographer
Yaqut al-Hamawi recorded in 1225 that Nawa was "a small town of the Hauran," formerly the capital of the region. He described it as the city where Job dwelled in and the burial place of
Shem, the son of
Noah. In 1233, Imam
Yahya ibn Sharaf al-Nawawi, a prominent
Muslim scholar, commonly called simply Imam al-Nawawi, was born in Nawa, hence his
nisba (epithet). His ancestor had moved there from the
Jawlan (Golan Heights) and left several descendants in the village. During the
Mamluk period (1260s–1517), Nawa was the center of the
amal (subdistrict) of Jaydur (the northwestern Hauran plain), part of the southern
safqa (march) of the Damascus
mamlaka (province). The village was mentioned by the 14th-century geographer
Abulfeda.
Ottoman period Following the
Ottoman conquest of Syria in 1517, Sultan
Selim I granted Nawa to the
Bedouin emir of the
Beqaa Valley,
Nasir Ibn al-Hanash, as an
iqta (tax farm) in return for ensuring Bedouin loyalty to the state. In 1596 Nawa appeared in the
Ottoman tax registers as 'Nawi' and was part of the
nahiya (subdistrict) of Jaydur in the
Hauran Sanjak. It had an entirely Muslim population consisting of 102 households and 43 bachelors. The villagers paid a fixed tax-rate of 40% on wheat, barley, summer crops, goats and/or beehives; a total of 26,000
akçe. Nawa was the administrative center of the Jaydur
nahiya, which was alternatively called 'Nawa' in government records. In 1884 the American archaeologist
Gottlieb Schumacher noted that Nawa was the second largest locality in the
Hauran after
Daraa, at least terms of its gross area. It had 300 dwellings, mostly constructed of reused ancient basaltic blocks and without mortar, many having timber roofs supplied by recent
Circassian settlers from the forests of the northern Jawlan. The homes were generally surrounded by large grounds used by the residents to shelter their sheepflocks. Many of the homes were unoccupied and the total population was between 750 and 800. Nawa's streets were wide and straight and in the center of the village was a large open area set around Ayn al-Ramashta, which at that time measured deep. Schumacher noted that Nawa had been one of the most populous and important places of the northwestern Hauran since ancient times and was "a village which has been built of ruins, and is surrounded by a great field of them, but yet itself contains hardly anything except modern buildings". The head
sheikh of Nawa was Ibrahim al-Midyab, who also held paramountcy among the sheikhs of other villages in the Hauran (a member of his clan, Abdullah al-Midyab controlled the large village of
Shajara).
Civil war In July 2018, the citizens of Nawa were subject to heavy Syrian government and Russian military bombardment, in an effort to rid the city from its anti-government forces. == Geography ==