Umm- Qais is the recent name of ancient Gadara, it had been mentioned in the late sixteenth century in the Ottoman tax records as
(Mkes), which means in the Arabic language a frontier station for gathering taxes. Gadara is the ancient Semitic name of modern
Umm-Qais, it Means "wall" in an indication to its highland topography, which makes it seem as a fortification or a fortress place. The human presence at
Umm-Qais started in the early Bronze Age. Archaeological evidence discovered at Umm- Qais plateau at an area of its agricultural lands called Umm- al Khawabi assures that. Pottery shreds of the late Bronze Age have been discovered by the Danish team excavating at Umm- Qais in 1983. The first appearance of ancient Gadara in the ancient historical records was after the conquest of the east by the forces of Alexander the Macedonian in 333BC. After his death Alexander Successors held a conference at Babel city in 223 BC, and decided to divide his spacious Empire among them, Seleucids in Syria, Ptolemies in Egypt. To protect the borders against their rivals (the Seleucids), Ptolemies Founded Gadara as a military colony, but in 218 BC Antiochus the third had sieged Gadara and Captured it from the
Ptolemies, the thing which converted Gadara to a Hellenistic city. In the early First Century BC Gadara was sieged again for ten months. Destroyed by the Jewish Hasmonaean king Alexander
Jannaeus, but this was no long, in 64/63 BC the Roman leader Pompious liberated Gadara and the other cities of the Decapolis from the
Hasmonaeans, and rebuilt the destroyed Gadara to please his Freedman Demetrius the
Gadarene. Later Gadara became one of the most important cities of the Decapolis, it had minted its own coins, and depended the pompean calendar. The New Testament mentions that Jesus Christ had visited Gadara and cured two mad men near it, but Christianity hadn't spread quickly among the Gadarenes because of their strong paganism. When Christianity was proclaimed the official religion of the Byzantine Empire, Gadara participated in 325 AD in the ecclesiastical council held in
Nicaea, and the five aisled church (uncovered by Prof. Dr. Thomas weber) was built at the same century on the Roman underground mausoleum, as an evidence of the victory of Christianity over Roman Paganism. Two Christian Gadarenes tortured and martyred in 303 AD in the term of the Roman Eperor
Diocletianos, so such an early church may be built at Gadara to commemorate both of them. Islam entered Gadara after the victory of Islamic troops over Byzantine armies at the Battles of Fahl (Pella) and Yarmouk in 635 AD and 636 AD Successively. Later Umm- Qais
(Gadara) attested the Umayyad period from 661 AD till 799 AD, the year in which the destructive earthquake turned the ruins of Gadara upside down. The Abbasid and Fatimid periods (750 - 1171 AD) seem as the missing link in the Islamic period at Umm -
Qais, perhaps because the city was abandoned after the strong earthquake had destroyed it. Ayyubide - Mammluke settlement is well - attested western Umm-
Qais. Privately in the area where Tiberias gate located. a hoard of more than 400 coins of crusades - Ayyabide period have been uncovered last year (2000) during the excavations of
Umm-Qais Antiquities Office, to the west of Tiberias gate in addition to a fragments and vessels of the painted Mammluk pottery. During the Crusades period king Baldwin the third took advantage of its strategic place as a point of pulling out.