page_title: Hauran
section_title: Grain cultivation and Hajj caravan transit
hierarchical_section_title: Hauran / History / Ottoman era / Grain cultivation and Hajj caravan transit
caption_attribution_description: English: An 1886 drawing of the village of en:al-Shaykh Saad in the en:Hauran region of en:Syria. Based on a photograph.
context_page_description: The Hauran also spelled Hawran or Houran is a region that spans parts of southern Syria and northern Jordan. It is bound in the north by the Ghouta oasis, eastwards by the al-Safa field, to the south by Jordan's desert steppe and to the west by the Golan Heights. Traditionally, the Hauran consists of three subregions: the Nuqrah and Jaydur plains, the Jabal al-Druze massif, and the Lajat volcanic field. The population of the Hauran is largely Arab, but religiously heterogeneous; most inhabitants of the plains are Sunni Muslims belonging to large agrarian clans, while Druze form the majority in the eponymous Jabal al-Druze and a significant Greek Orthodox and Greek Catholic minority inhabit the western foothills of Jabal al-Druze. The region's largest towns are Daraa, al-Ramtha and al-Suwayda.
  From the mid-1st century BCE, the region was governed by the Roman Empire's Herodian and Nabatean client kings until it was formally annexed by the empire in the 2nd century CE. The Hauran prospered under Roman rule and its villages functioned as largely self-governing units, some of which developed into imperial cities.
context_section_description: The Hauran was incorporated into the Ottoman Empire following its conquest of Mamluk Syria in 1517. In the early Ottoman era, during the 16th and 17th centuries, there were numerous agrarian, primarily grain-growing villages in the Hauran plain and the western slopes of Jabal Hauran. Most of the inhabitants paid taxes on wheat and barley. The Hauran had long been a major grain-producing region and officially, its land belonged to the Ottoman state and its inhabitants were required to pay taxes and be conscripted into the army. However, as state authority receded, the region effectively became autonomous. An exception to this virtual autonomy came during the annual thirty- to sixty-day Hajj season, during which the state mobilized its forces to organize, protect and supply the annual Muslim pilgrim caravan to Mecca and Medina; In the 18th century, the Hajj route was moved westward from Bosra to Muzayrib, which became the caravan's marshaling point in the Hauran.
  
  Instead of their direct involvement in the Hauran, the authorities entrusted its affairs to the Damascene aghawat, who commanded small, mobile units of mounted irregulars. In return for the political and economic influence they were allowed in the Hauran, the aghawat secured revenue from the region's population to fund the Hajj caravan, escorted the caravan and other travelers and policed the region. The principal restriction on the power of the aghawat was resistance from the Hauran's inhabitants. Thus, the aghawat sought to become more indispensable to the local population. To that end, they often mediated between the settled inhabitants of the plain and the Bedouin nomads, and between the Hauran's population as a whole and all outside powers, including the state. According to historian Linda S. Schilcher, 
   This hinterland political system had its own internal checks and, of course, its strains, but it appears to have existed with a fair degree of equilibrium for a very long period of time. The low pressure of population on the land and the natural economies that existed between steppe and cultivated plain and between town and countryside appear to have contributed to this relatively stable situation.
caption: An 1886 sketch of al-Shaykh Saad, the administrative center of the Hauran Sanjak.
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