History of Sur Bahir

In 1596, it appeared in Ottoman tax registers as "Sur Bahir", a village in the Nahiya of Quds in the Liwa of Quds. It had a population of 29 households, all Muslim, and paid taxes on wheat barley, vineyards and fruit trees, goats and beehives.

French explorer Victor Guérin visited the place in the 1860s, and described Sur Baher as having about 400 inhabitants. In 1883, it was described as "a stone village of moderate size, on a bare hill. On the north is a well in the valley, and there are rock-cut tombs above it to the west."

In the 1922 census of Palestine, conducted by the British