Pottery sherds from the early
Ottoman era have also been found here,[7] and it was mentioned in the sixteenth hundreds
tax records under the name of Kafr Shu.[9]
In 1838 Um Safah was noted as a
Muslim village the Beni Zaid district.[10]
In 1870,
Victor Guérin climbed up on the hilltop which Umm Safa occupied, and found that the village had about 300 inhabitants. He further noted that: "It must go back to an ancient site as is shown by the materials used in the building of some houses and several
columnar sections scattered about the ground. A copious spring, called Ain Umm Safa, provides the villagers with water. They venerate, under a
koubbeh, the remains of Nabi Hanan."[11] An official Ottoman village list from about the same year, 1870, listed Kefr Eschwa as having 24 houses and a population of 120, though the population count included men, only. It was noted as being located north of
Dschibija.[12][13]
In 1882 the
PEF's Survey of Western Palestine (SWP) described Umm Suffah (also called Kefr Ishwah) as "a village on high ground on the Roman road to
Antipatris. It contains a small
mosque or Moslem chapel, and has a
well to the north."[5]
Tomb of Nabi Hanun
Located within the village is the mosque of a-Nabi Hanun, which includes an unmarked grave said to belong to a local Muslim saint of the same name. The mosque was built in 1986 following the destruction of the previous tomb housing the remains. Local tradition says that Nabi Hanun and Nabi Sair, whose grave was in the western part of the village, were both sons of
Yaqub (
Jacob).[14]
In the
1945 statistics, the population of Umm Safa (Kafr Ishwa) was 110 Muslims,[17] while the total land area was 4,083
dunams, according to an official land and population survey.[18] Of this, 1,364 dunums were used for plantations and irrigable land, 821 for cereals,[19] while 17 dunams were classified as built-up areas.[20]
After the
1995 accords, 16% of village land has been defined as
Area B land, while the remaining 84% is
Area C. Israel has confiscated a total of 227 dunams of land from the village in order to construct two
Israeli settlements:
Ateret and
Hallamish.[22]
^Tal, Uri (2023). Muslim Shrines in Eretz Israel: History, Religion, Traditions, Folklore. Jerusalem: Yad Izhak Ben-Zvi. p. 186.
ISBN978-965-217-452-9.
^Barron, 1923, Table VII, Sub-district of Ramallah, p.
17