Abu Shusha

The village was situated on the south slope of Tall Jazar, where the coastal plain met the Jerusalem foothills. It was linked by a secondary road to the Jaffa-Jerusalem highway, which ran northeast of it. Tall Jazar is identified with the Old Testament city of Gezer, which was the site of a major excavation early in this century. The city may have first been settled as early as the fourth millennium B.C.; excavations in the village turned up artifacts that dated back to the third millennium B.C. (the early Bronze Age). The Canaanites made the place into a city and enclosed it with a wall. It was mentioned as one of the cities that were occupied by Thutmose III around 1469 B.C. Solomon is believed to have turned it into a major stronghold. It prospered as well under the Persians and the Greeks; a Roman house and early Christian lamps were unearthed there. In Roman times the site was called Gazara. It lay within the administrative jurisdiction of Nicopolis, a city that occupied the site of the modern Palestinian village of 'Imwas. (This village was populated until June 1967, when the Israeli government destroyed it and two other villages, Bayt Nuba and Yalu, soon after the capture of the West Bank.) Little is known about Abu Shusha in the early Islamic period. In A.D. 1177 the site, called Mont Gisart by the Crusaders, was the location of a battle between the Crusaders and the troops of Salah al-Din al-Ayyubi (Saladin) in which the latter were defeated. Artifacts (ceramics and coins) dating to the thirteenth century A.D. that were found on the site indicate that it may have been inhabited at that time. There is also evidence of construction in the following centuries; a shrine (maqam) on the tell seems to have been built in the sixteenth century. During the early nineteenth century Abu Shusha was a village built of stone and mud and surrounded by cactus hedges. The village population consisted of 100 families. Later in the nineteenth century the traveler Elihu Grant, who saw Abu Shusha, described it as a tiny village.

In modern times the entire population of the village was Muslim. The villagers made their houses of mud and stone and built them close to each other. Abu Shusha had a mosque, a number of shops, and an elementary school founded in 1947, with an initial enrollment of 33 children. In 1944/45 a total of 2,475 dunums was allocated to cereals; 54 dunums were irrigated or used for orchards.