Fasayel Farms
A secret beneath the soil
Long before Fasayel Farms became what it is today, the land beneath it held a secret. In the 1970s, while working the fields near their home, the Al-Nimer family uncovered something unexpected — the edge of an ancient stone structure buried beneath eight metres of soil. What followed was months of careful excavation, done largely by hand, alongside neighbours and volunteers from Europe who had come to help work the land.
A Roman-era reservoir
What emerged was a Roman-era water reservoir — a pool built roughly two thousand years ago, when the Jordan Valley sat along vital trade and travel routes through the region. Structures like it were part of a wider network of Roman engineering that brought water to arid land, enabling agriculture in places that would otherwise remain barren.
A relationship with water, older than the family
For the Al-Nimer family, the discovery was more than an archaeological curiosity. It was proof that Fasayel's relationship with water — irrigation, cultivation, the careful management of a scarce resource in the Jordan Valley — did not begin with them. It stretched back millennia before Qasem Al-Nimer ever settled this land in 1890.
Preserved by the family, four generations on
Today, the Roman Pool is preserved by the family as a heritage and archaeological site — a quiet reminder that the land Fasayel Farms cultivates has always demanded patience, engineering, and respect for water. Four generations later, the family's own irrigation network — dug and expanded by Samsam Al-Nimer in the late 1970s — carries forward that same relationship with the land, just as the Romans once did. The Roman Pool is not open for public excavation tours, but its photographs and story are part of Fasayel Farms' Album, alongside the family's other archival history.
See the Roman Pool in the Album
Explore the excavation photographs and the rest of the Al-Nimer family archive.
Browse the Album