Ceramics from the
Byzantine era have been found here.[5]
Ottoman era
Al-Ras was incorporated into the
Ottoman Empire in 1517 with all of
Palestine, and in
a sijill (royal order) from 941/1535 an unspecified share of the village revenue was given to the
waqf for Ribat al-Mansuri (
com) in
Jerusalem.[6]
In 1596 the village appeared in the
tax registers as being in the Nahiya of Bani Sa'b of the Liwa of
Nablus. It had a population of 22 households, all
Muslim. The villagers paid a fixed tax-rate of 33,3% on various agricultural products, including wheat, barley, summer crops, olive trees, goats and/or beehives in addition to occasional revenues, a press for olive oil or grape syrup, and a fixed tax for people of Nablus area; a total of 6,100
akçe.[7]
In 1838,
Robinson noted Kefr Sur as a village in Beni Sa'ab district, west of
Nablus.[8]
In the 1860s, the Ottoman authorities granted the village an agricultural plot of land called Ghabat Kafr Sur in the former confines of the Forest of Arsur (Ar. Al-Ghaba) in the coastal plain, west of the village. During this British Mandate period, this territory developed into a village called
Ghabat Kafr Sur.[9][10]
In 1870/1871 (1288
AH), an Ottoman census listed the village with 139
Household in the nahiya (sub-district) of Bani Sa'b.[11]
Around the turn of the 20th century, Kafr Sur and its
Ghaba were areas in which the Hannun Family of Tulkarm/
Saffarin owned extensive estates. The Hannuns fostered close ties with the clans inhabiting Kafr Sur.[13]
In the
1945 statistics the population of Kafr Sur was 460; 450 Muslims and 10 Christians,[16] with 10,926
dunams of land according to an official land and population survey.[17] Of this, 878 dunams were plantations and irrigable land, 2,644 were used for cereals,[18] while 14 dunams were built-up (urban) land.[19]
^Robinson and Smith, 1841, vol 3, Appendix 2, p.
127
^Marom, Roy, "The Contribution of Conder's Tent Work in Palestine for the Understanding of Shifting Geographical, Social and Legal Realities in the Sharon during the Late Ottoman Period", in Gurevich D. and Kidron, A. (eds.), Exploring the Holy Land: 150 Years of the Palestine Exploration Fund, Sheffield, UK, Equinox (2019), pp. 212-231