Ancient Inhabitants

The people of Umm Al-Jimāl are not known from literary sources, so they cannot be readily associated with tribal or group names or historic-ethnic identity. Therefore, we mainly know the people of Umm Al-Jimāl culturally, from the material remains they left behind. Fortunately, we have numerous inscriptions from the Nabataean to Umayyad periods from which we can derive linguistic identity. Because many of these texts contain personal names, we can make inferences on historic-ethnic identity for these periods. Finally, we can also infer from the circumstantial evidence of the larger history of the Levant who might have been at Umm Al-Jimāl during a given period.

Epipaleolithic artifacts (B. Hoksbergen)

Local Nomads

A number of Paleolithic tools were found in the area of the village and its surroundings during a transect survey in 1998. Finds, all made of chert, included Acheulean handaxes from the Lower Paleolithic, Levallois cores and points from the Middle Paleolithic, and endscrapers and blades from the Upper Paleolithic (see Hoksbergen’s 2010 article in the Library). Hunter-gatherers were no doubt attracted to the area because the wadis provided a seasonal water source.

There is no Neolithic, Bronze, or Iron Age evidence in the immediate vicinity of Umm Al-Jimāl. To the east, however, the desert was a fertile hunting ground and still bears ample evidence of construction and habitation from these periods, from domestic structures, epigraphy, and kites, to larger settlements like Jawa.

First Settlement at Umm Al-Jimāl

When the Nabataean authorities expanded their sphere to Bostra in the first century AD, we should not presume that they colonized Umm Al-Jimāl, but rather, that they encouraged local nomads (Arabs in the broad sense as described above) to settle and adapt to a more agrarian economy.

The local people used the languages of influence, Greek and Nabataean, for their inscriptions, but nevertheless had predominantly Arab names, which occur in great variety on the hundreds of tomb stelae dating from the second to fourth centuries CE. Though transcribed into Nabataean and Greek, the Arab character of the names is clear: for example, men named Zabud and Awid, and women named Asnom and Yakhlud. Some took on Greek names, like Neon, a soldier in the Roman legion, whose father had the Arab name Kami’ah. Others were called Philip or Heracles, either by choice or because they were foreigners who retired in Umm Al-Jimāl.

Thus, the people of Umm Al-Jimāl were not Nabataeans or Romans by ethnicity, but rather local people living under Nabataean patronage first, and then under Roman rule.

Drawing of a Nabataean/Roman period tomb (H.C. Butler)

Ancient and modern Umm Al-Jimāl (UJAP)

Arab Identity

It is also interesting that over time the Arab identity of these local residents became increasingly specific. In fact, Umm Al-Jimāl is a locus for the early development of the Arabic script. This story includes the third century inscription mentioning the career of Gadhima, the King of the Tanoukh, which is written in a late Nabataean script that is clearly transitioning into Arabic. There is also a difficult-to-read pre-Islamic Arabic inscription which was built into an arch of the Double church, and finally an Umayyad graffito on a column of the Praetorium in good Arabic, saying “Seven times seventy bismillahs!” Clearly, the people of Late Antique Umm Al-Jimāl were historic Arabs.

The identity of those who resettled Umm Al-Jimāl in the 19th to 21st centuries CE is historically clearer. In the late 19th century the area of Umm Al-Jimāl was included in the grazing and construction territory of the Ahl el-Jebel, the People of the Mountain to the north, which is called the Jebel Druze or the Jebel al-Arab. They appear to have been a coalition of Druze agriculturalists and Mas’eid pastoralists. The Druze, who have distinct religious culture originating in Lebanon, lived around the ruins of Umm Al-Jimāl between 1910 and 1932. When they left, mostly to return north into Syria, the Mas’eid, a Sunni Arab tribal group, settled in and around the ruins from the 1940s onward, and are the main inhabitants of the New Municipality of Umm Al-Jimāl today, which surrounds the ruins.