Nawa, Hometown of Imam al-Nawawi

A town in the Hauran, 40 kilometres north of Daraa and 85 kilometres south of Damascus, at 563 metres above sea level. Its best-known son is Imam al-Nawawi, author of Riyad al-Salihin, who was born here in 1233 and is buried here. No single standing monument stands out in the town. What there is to see is its layers: basalt stones from the Roman, Byzantine and early Islamic periods sit in the walls of today’s houses.

Imam al-Nawawi

Al-Nawawi was born in Nawa in 1233, died in 1277 and was buried in his hometown. His books on hadith and law, above all Riyad al-Salihin and the Forty Hadith, still have a very wide readership. His tomb was destroyed in 2015 by groups linked to al-Nusra.

Neve in the Roman and Byzantine centuries

In the Roman and Byzantine periods the town was called Neve or Naveh. It appears in the 3rd-century Rehob mosaic and in the Midrash Rabba, and Eusebius calls it a Jewish town. The Bordeaux pilgrim passed through in 333-334. There was a circle known as the rabbis of Naveh (Rabbanan de-Naveh), and Byzantine basalt fragments carved with menorahs have been found reused in local houses. Nawa was also a bishopric under Bosra: Bishop Petronius attended the Council of Ephesus in 431 and Jobius the Council of Chalcedon in 451. Clive Foss and Irfan Shahid attribute a reception hall in one of the ruined palaces to the Ghassanids, the Arab Christian dynasty whose seat at Jabiyah lay just to the west.

Chief town of the Hauran

In the early Islamic period Nawa was the chief town of the Hauran, and it was destroyed in the earthquake of 749. Al-Muqaddasi wrote of its wealth in wheat in 985. Yaqut, in 1225, called it a small Hauran town and named it as the place where Job lived and where Shem, son of Noah, is buried. Under the Mamluks — the soldier-sultans who ruled Egypt and Syria — it was the centre of the Jaydur district, and the Ottoman register of 1596 lists 102 households. In 1884 Schumacher described Nawa as the largest settlement in the Hauran after Daraa: 300 houses, most of them built without mortar from reused ancient basalt.

What to see

The town itself. Ancient basalt blocks built into house walls, laid in the mortarless technique Schumacher described, can still be seen here and there. Two hills nearby stand out in the sources: Tell al-Jabiyah, the Ghassanid seat, and Tell al-Jumu’, where Khalid ibn al-Walid is said to have gathered his troops before Yarmouk. The sources give no plan or date for buildings such as the tomb of Shem or the old mosque, so this page does not describe them.

Its condition now

Nawa was besieged and raided in 2011. The governorate has been under the transitional government since December 2024, and security incidents continued in the western Daraa countryside through 2025 and 2026. Access to the town today and the condition of its old buildings have not been verified.