Jairoud ( ar, جيرود; also spelled Jerud or Jayroud) is a city in southern Syria, administratively part of the

Rif Dimashq Governorate Rif Dimashq Governorate ( ar, محافظة ريف دمشق, ', literally, the "Governorate of the Countryside of Damascus", Damascus Suburb) is one of the fourteen governorates (provinces) of Syria. It is situated in the southwestern part of the ...

, located northeast of Damascus in the

Qalamoun Mountains The Qalamoun Mountains ( ar, جبال القلمون, Jabāl al-Qalamūn) are the northeastern portion of the Anti-Lebanon Mountains, and they are northeast of the Syrian capital Damascus. They run from Barada River Valley in the southwest to ...

. Nearby localities include

ar-Ruhaybah Al-Ruhaybah or Al-Ruhaibah ( ar, الرحيبة) is a Syrian city in the Al-Qutayfah District of the Rif Dimashq Governorate. According to the Syria Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS), Ar-Ruhaybah had a population of 30,450 in the 2004 census. ...

, al-Qutayfah and

Muadamiyat al-Qalamoun Muadamiyat al-Qalamoun ( ar, معضمية القلمون) is a Syrian town in the Al-Qutayfah District of the Rif Dimashq Governorate. According to the Syria Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS), Muadamiyat al-Qalamoun had a population of 14,228 i ...

to the southwest,

Yabroud Yabroud or Yabrud ( ar, يَبْرُود, Yabrūd) is a city in Syria, located in the '' Rif Dimashq'' (i.e. Damascus' countryside) governorate about north of the capital Damascus. According to the Syria Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS), Y ...

, an-Nabek and Deir Atiyah to the north and

al-Qaryatayn Al-Qaryatayn ( ar, ٱلْقَرْيَتَين, syr, ܩܪܝܬܝܢ), also spelled Karyatayn, Qaratin or Cariatein, is a town in central Syria, administratively part of the Homs Governorate located southeast of Homs. It is situated on an oasis in ...

to the northeast. According to the Syria Central Bureau of Statistics, Jairoud had a population of 24,219 in the 2004 census.General Census of Population and Housing 2004
Syria Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS). Rif Dimashq Governorate. The city is also the administrative center of the Jairoud ''

nahiyah 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 ...

'' which consists of four towns and villages with a combined population of 31,821. Its inhabitants are predominantly

Sunni Muslim Sunni Islam () is the largest branch of Islam, followed by 85–90% of the world's Muslims. Its name comes from the word ''Sunnah'', referring to the tradition of Muhammad. The differences between Sunni and Shia Muslims arose from a disagr ...

History

Excavations at the site produced

microlith A microlith is a small stone tool usually made of flint or chert and typically a centimetre or so in length and half a centimetre wide. They were made by humans from around 35,000 to 3,000 years ago, across Europe, Africa, Asia and Australia. The ...

s, blades, scrapers and other lithic tools dating back to the

Natufian culture The Natufian culture () is a Late Epipaleolithic archaeological culture of the Levant, dating to around 15,000 to 11,500 years ago. The culture was unusual in that it supported a sedentary or semi-sedentary population even before the introduct ...

. During

Roman times In modern historiography, ancient Rome refers to Roman civilisation from the founding of the city of Rome in the 8th century BC to the collapse of the Western Roman Empire in the 5th century AD. It encompasses the Roman Kingdom (753–509 BC ...

, Jairoud was known as Geroda. The city is mentioned in the

Antonine Itinerary The Antonine Itinerary ( la, Itinerarium Antonini Augusti, "The Itinerary of the Emperor Antoninus") is a famous '' itinerarium'', a register of the stations and distances along various roads. Seemingly based on official documents, possibl ...

which was written during the reign of Diocletian. In the itinirary the city is one of the stations on the Roman road between Palmyra and Damascus, and is at a distance of 16 Roman miles from ''Telsea'' (modern Al-Dumayr). Jairoud was visited by Syrian geographer

Yaqut al-Hamawi Yāqūt Shihāb al-Dīn ibn-ʿAbdullāh al-Rūmī al-Ḥamawī (1179–1229) ( ar, ياقوت الحموي الرومي) was a Muslim scholar of Byzantine Greek ancestry active during the late Abbasid period (12th-13th centuries). He is known for ...

in the early 13th-century, during

Ayyubid The Ayyubid dynasty ( ar, الأيوبيون '; ) was the founding dynasty of the medieval Sultanate of Egypt established by Saladin in 1171, following his abolition of the Fatimid Caliphate of Egypt. A Sunni Muslim of Kurdish origin, Saladin ...

rule. He noted that it was "a village of Ma'loula in the Ghautah of Damascus."Le Strange, 1890,
463
/ref> Under the

Ottomans The Ottoman Turks ( tr, Osmanlı Türkleri), were the Turkic founding and sociopolitically the most dominant ethnic group of the Ottoman Empire ( 1299/1302–1922). Reliable information about the early history of Ottoman Turks remains scarce, ...

, the city served as the centre of the ''Jairoud Nahiyah'', and was the seat of a ''

Pasha Pasha, Pacha or Paşa ( ota, پاشا; tr, paşa; sq, Pashë; ar, باشا), in older works sometimes anglicized as bashaw, was a higher rank in the Ottoman political and military system, typically granted to governors, generals, dignita ...

'' (Mohammed Aldaas Jairoudi Pasha) and an '' Agha'' (Saleem Aldaas Agha) In the 19th century, the city was described as affluent, hospitable and "unusually clean." The city was attacked frequently by Bedouin tribes that live on the edge of the

Syrian Desert The Syrian Desert ( ar, بادية الشام ''Bādiyat Ash-Shām''), also known as the North Arabian Desert, the Jordanian steppe, or the Badiya, is a region of desert, semi-desert and steppe covering of the Middle East, including parts of so ...

Geography

The city lies on the ancient merchant caravan route between Damascus and

Palmyra Palmyra (; Palmyrene: () ''Tadmor''; ar, تَدْمُر ''Tadmur'') is an ancient city in present-day Homs Governorate, Syria. Archaeological finds date back to the Neolithic period, and documents first mention the city in the early seco ...

, in the fertile plain of Jairoud on the foothills of the

. The land is well-cultivated and is known for its produce of

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 archaeolog ...

and

barley Barley (''Hordeum vulgare''), a member of the grass family, is a major cereal grain grown in temperate climates globally. It was one of the first cultivated grains, particularly in Eurasia as early as 10,000 years ago. Globally 70% of barley ...

. The city lies to the western end of a large

salt marsh A salt marsh or saltmarsh, also known as a coastal salt marsh or a tidal marsh, is a coastal ecosystem in the upper coastal intertidal zone between land and open saltwater or brackish water that is regularly flooded by the tides. It is domin ...

called, "al-Mallahah".Porter, 1868, p. 510.

References

Bibliography

* * * * * {{Rif Dimashq Governorate, qutayfah Populated places in Al-Qutayfah District Natufian sites Neolithic sites in Syria Archaeological sites in Rif Dimashq Governorate Cities in Syria