Barqusya

The village stood on a hill that sloped toward the northwest in the western foothills of the Hebron Mountains. A dirt path that turned into a secondary road at the village of Summayl, to the southwest, linked the village to the highway between the city of al-Majdal (on the coast) and Hebron. In the late nineteenth century, Barqusya, a moderate-sized village, had a roughly pentagonal outline, its houses built of stone and mud.

During the first decades of this century construction grew at a slow pace, most of the expansion taking place northward along the road to the village of Bi'lin, to the northwest. But during the final years of the Mandate, one of the village's two hama'il (clans, sing. hamula) moved about 1 km to the south, and the outline of the village was also stretched southward. The village had a handful of small shops and a small mosque. The children attended school in the village of Tall aI-Safi, to the northwest. To the west of the village was a well that had supplied the village with drinking water since the late nineteenth century. Agriculture, which represented the mainstay of the economy, was rainfed. The residents cultivated chiefly grain but also tended fruit trees. In 1944/45 a total of 2,460 dunums was allocated to cereals 28 dunums were irrigated or used for orchards. In addition to crop cultivation, the villagers raised sheep and goats.