Khirbat Umm Burj

The village stood on a hilltop, overlooking a broad expanse of land in all four directions. Its name was probably derived from a tower that had been erected in the center of the site. Khirbat Umm Burj was described in the late nineteenth century as a ruined village with a central tower that was (erroneously?) thought to be recently built. Its earlier name, which has not been preserved, may originally have contained the Greek word pyrgos ('tower'); Burj is an Arabization of this word. Two dirt paths gave the village access to a highway between Bayt Jibrin and Hebron and to another highway that ran from Bayt Jibrin northeast to the Jaffa-Jerusalem highway. Additional mountainous tracks linked it to the area's other villages, including Dayr Nakhkhas, Surif, and Nuba.

Khirbat Umm Burj, classified as a hamlet in the Mandate-era Palestine Index Gazetteer, stretched out in an east-west direction, and its houses were made of stone. Its residents, who were Muslims, obtained their drinking water from three wells on the northern tip of the site. Their chief economic activities were rainfed agriculture and animal husbandry. They cultivated grain and fruits such as olives and grapes. In 1944/45 a total of 3,546 dunums was allocated to cereals 28 dunums were irrigated or used for orchards. The village was originally an uninhabited khirba that contained walls, cisterns, caves, and rock carvings. There were at least twenty khirbas on village land, including Jamrura, perhaps to be identified with Gemmruris in Roman times. The ancient history of the site remains to be determined, but the presence of cisterns and a columbarium suggest a Roman habitation.