The Ramallah Family Tree is based on the book titled “Ramallah, Its History and Its Genealogies” by the late Azeez Shaheen. This book was last published in 1982, but the information in it dates back to 1970’s. Since then, the Ramallah Family has grown, and the Family Tree Project attempts at updating this family tree to maintain a record of the descendants of the original clans. These descendants always thought of themselves as a single large extended family. Most of these descendants live now in the U.S. and they established the American Federation of Ramallah- Palestine to maintain, to enhance, these relationships between the descendants.
The Ramallah Family Tree is based on the book titled “Ramallah, Its History and Its Genealogies” by the late Azeez Shaheen. This book was last published in 1982, but the information in it dates back to 1970’s. Since then, the Ramallah Family has grown, and the Family Tree Project attempts at updating this family tree to maintain a record of the descendants of the original clans. These descendants always thought of themselves as a single large extended family. Most of these descendants live now in the U.S. and they established the American Federation of Ramallah-Palestine to maintain, to enhance, these relationships between the descendants.
Since the community has grown to over 30,000 people, both in Ramallah and the diaspora, it became very clear that in time, these relationships will “dissolve” in the communities they live in and ultimately lose their heritage, identity, and background. It became clear that there is a need to maintain a database to show the interrelationships of the descendants and their origins. This is essential and existential to the community to educate the new generations about their unique heritage, background as well as maintain this bond between the family members at large, regardless of where they reside.
The Family Tree project started in 2004 at the San Jose Ramallah convention. We published the family genealogy in books on the AFRP.org website for the community to review. To update the family tree, we will rely on the different Ramallah families to update their information to the best of their abilities. The Ramallah Family Tree can then be updated with additional names of new generations, make any corrections to the Clan, add names of female members of family, add last names of members, and add any other relevant information (such as date of birth, date of marriage, date of immigration, date of death, etc.)
A family member can access a form on the website, and once an access request is granted, it allows access to the family tree by clicking the button above. There are instructions on how to navigate through the family tree, and there is also a form that one can complete with any updates and submit. These updates will then be added to the Family Tree. Another option would be to send any updates to John Mogannam by email at [email protected].