Ajami (, also transliterated ''Ajamy'') is a village in southern

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 ...

, administratively part 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 ...

, located northwest of

Daraa Daraa (, Levantine Arabic: ) is a city in southwestern Syria, north of the border with Jordan. It is the capital of Daraa Governorate in the Hauran region. Located south of Damascus on the Damascus–Amman highway, it serves as a way sta ...

. According to the Syria Central Bureau of Statistics, Ajami had a population of 1,646 in the 2004 census.General Census of Population and Housing 2004
Syria Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS). Daraa Governorate. By June 2015, the population had decline to about 1,300 (of whom 900 were

IDPs An internally displaced person (IDP) is someone who is forced to leave their home but who remains within their country's borders. They are often referred to as refugees, although they do not fall within the legal definitions of a refugee. I ...

displaced from other settlements by the ongoing Syrian Civil War).

History

The village was named, probably no earlier than the late 18th century, for the nearby ''

maqam Maqam, makam, maqaam or maqām (plural maqāmāt) may refer to: Musical structures * Arabic maqam, melodic modes in traditional Arabic music ** Iraqi maqam, a genre of Arabic maqam music found in Iraq * Persian maqam, a notion in Persian clas ...

'' (mausoleum) of Shaykh Muhammad al-Ajami, local Muslim saintly figure. The tomb was rectangular, constructed partly of stone and in a poor state when

Gottlieb Schumacher Gottlieb Schumacher (21 November 1857 – 26 November 1925) was an United States, American-born civil engineer, architecture, architect and archaeology, archaeologist of Germans, German descent, who was an important figure in the early archaeol ...

visited the area in the early 1880s. The name 'Ajami' was also given to the stream, Wadi al-Ajami, which supplied the village with water, and the stream's source, the Bahret al-Ajami marsh. Shumacher described the village itself as having been flourishing at one point but by then partly abandoned and consisting of about thirty stone or mud huts, twelve of which were still inhabited by some thirty impoverished residents. He noted a "well-arched gate of modern masonry" on the east side of Ajami, which had been the entrance to the village

sheikh Sheikh ( , , , , ''shuyūkh'' ) is an honorific title in the Arabic language, literally meaning "elder (administrative title), elder". It commonly designates a tribal chief or a Muslim ulama, scholar. Though this title generally refers to me ...

's garden.

References

Bibliography

* {{Daraa Governorate, daraa Populated places in Daraa District Villages in Syria