Jabiyah, the Ghassanid Capital

A mound now called Tell al-Jabiyah, lying between the Hauran plain and the rise of the Golan, west of Nawa. Nothing stands on the site. What matters here is not in the stone but in the sources: from the sixth century to the eighth, this was one of the places where the political decisions about Syria were taken.

What it tells

Jabiyah was first the seat of the Ghassanids, an Arab Christian dynasty holding the Byzantine frontier, whose kings kept their camp here. The name appears first around 520, in a letter the Syriac bishop Simeon wrote from the camp of the Ghassanid king Jabala ibn al-Harith. Another Syriac letter of 569 mentions the monastery of Saint Sergius here. In 587 two Miaphysite parties met at Jabiyah to settle their disputes, a gathering that shows the weight the place carried in church affairs.

What happened next

After Yarmouk, Jabiyah became the main camp of the Muslim army in Syria. Caliph Umar summoned his commanders and the senior companions here in 638; the military organisation of Syria, the division of spoils and the register of pay were all settled at that meeting. The speech remembered in the sources as the khutba of Jabiyah was given here. In 684 Arab tribal representatives met on the same ground and chose Marwan as caliph. Umayyad caliphs used Jabiyah as a retreat. Its importance faded when Caliph Sulayman moved the main camp to Dabiq.

Is it worth the trip

There is no ruin tour here; there is a mound and there are fields. Still, for anyone trying to read the Hauran, the position is itself the information: the north-western edge of the plain, astride the road up to Damascus, beside a spring. The name is thought to relate to the Arabic word for a reservoir, though a Syriac word meaning the chosen has also been proposed.