Nu'aym

The Nu'aym (Arabic: بنو نعيم), also spelled Na'imeh, Na'im, Nu'im or Ne'im, are a large tribal confederation present in different parts of Syria.

Their main concentration is in the Hauran and Golan Heights regions of southern Syria, with a significant presence in the suburbs of Damascus and the countryside of Homs, Idlib and Raqqa.

[1] Among their settlements in the Quneitra Governorate, which spans the Golan Heights, are al-Rafid, Kudna, al-Muallaqa, al-Qasibah, al-Asbah, al-Asha, Saida, Ghadir al-Bustan, al-Amudiyah, al-Mushrifah, Sabta and Batmiyah.

[11] The tribe was raided in the Hauran in the early 1770s by Sheikh Zahir al-Umar, the practically autonomous Arab ruler of northern Palestine.

[14] In the mid-19th century, during the latter years of Egyptian rule (1831–1841), tribesmen of the Nu'aym, as well as the Mawali and Uqaydat, were the principle settlers of the villages being reestablished east of Hama and Homs, on the desert fringe.

[15] The last is popularly held to be the burial place of the Nu'aym's purported common ancestor, Izz al-Din al-Hamra, for whom the village was named.

When the French began occupying parts of Syria around that time, the Nu'aym chief Abdullah al-Tahhan at the head of the Arabs in the eastern Golan Heights threw their support behind Faisal.

He and the emir of the other major Golan tribe Al Fadl, Mahmoud al-Faour, were pardoned by the French Mandatory authorities and returned to Syria.

[2] The leader of the Na'im of southern Syria, Sheikh Abdul Razzaq al-Tahhan, was elected the Quneitra District's representative in the Syrian Parliament in 1954.

[2] After Israel occupied the Golan Heights during the 1967 Arab-Israeli War, the Nu'aym living in the territory's central and southern parts were displaced and their villages razed.

After the 1973 Arab-Israeli War, part of the Nu'aym's villages in and just east of the buffer zone, namely al-Rafid, al-Asbah, al-Asha and Saida, were restored and some of the tribesmen resettled there.

[4] The supreme commander of the Free Syrian Army's Southern Front, Brigadier-General Abdel-Illah al-Bashir and Colonel Abdo Na'imeh, belonged to the tribe.