The Family Tree Project began in 2003 during the Ramallah Convention held in San Jose, California, with the goal of documenting the genealogy of the original Ramallah clans, starting with the grandfather of Ramallah, Rashed El-Haddadeen, who settled with his family in Ramallah around the year 1517 AD.
Rashed descended from the prestigious Ghassanite tribe, which originally came from the Arabian Peninsula. The Ghassanites were a Christian tribe that ruled the Arabian Peninsula and the Levant prior to Islam. It helped unite the disparate Arab tribes of the Peninsula and create the unified Arabic language as we know it today. The Rashed Haddadeen Clan, a descendant of the Ghassinites, settled in Karak in the south of Jordan prior to moving to Ramallah.
The Ramallah Family Tree is based on the book titled “Ramallah, Its History and Its Genealogies” by the late Azeez Shaheen, published in 1982, with information dating back to the mid-1970s.
Since then, the Ramallah extended family has grown exponentially, and the Family Tree Project goal is to continuously update the various family trees to maintain an accurate as possible record of the descendants of the original clans. These descendants always thought of themselves as a single large extended family.
Today, most of these descendants live in the U.S. and have established the American Federation of Ramallah Palestine to maintain and enhance these relationships between the descendants through various events such as the annual convention or family reunion and Hathihe Ramallah magazine, and through the Federation’s many projects and programs.
Since the Ramallah community has grown to more than 30,000 people, both in Ramallah and in diaspora, it became evident that over time, the descendants and their families will “dissolve” in the communities they live in and lose their heritage, identity and background. This prompted us to embark on an effort to maintain a database to document and show the interrelationships between the descendants and their origins. This is essential and existential to the community to educate new generations about their unique heritage and background as well as maintain this bond between the extended family members at large, regardless of where they reside.
We published each family clan genealogy in books on the AFRP.org website for the community to review.
To include accurate family information, we rely on the Ramallah families to update their family tree to the best of their abilities. Additional names, corrections and other relevant information such as births, deaths, divorce and marriage dates, as well as dates of immigration, etc. may be included in each clan's family tree.
- Click Apply to Join Project and submit the request form.
- Watch for an email confirming approval.
- After approval, return to this page and select Members Only Area.
- Review your clan book(s).
- Use the Update form on this page to submit corrections or additions.
- Approved updates will be added to the Ramallah Family Tree.
Another option would be to send any updates directly to John Mogannam by email: heyyjohnny@gmail.com.