Abtaa dates back to antiquity, having been mentioned in pre-Islamic Syriac texts.[2]
In 1596 Abtaa appeared in the Ottomantax registers as Bita' and was part of the nahiya of Bani Malik al-Asraf in the Hauran Sanjak. It had an entirely Muslim population consisting of 44 households and 20 bachelors. The villagers paid a fixed tax rate of 40% on various agricultural products, including wheat, barley, summer crops, goats and beehives; a total of 5,000 akçe.[3]
In 1838 it was noted as a Muslim village, situated in the Nukrah district, south of Al-Shaykh Maskin.[4] In the 1850s the Western traveler Josias Leslie Porter noted that Abtaa contained a number of large "old houses of basalt, and a few broken columns."[5]