A burial cave from the Persian era have been excavated[4] and Hellenistic (3rd–2nd centuries BCE), remains have also been found here.[3][5]
Historical geographer, Samuel Klein (1886–1940), suggested identifying the village with the 2nd century town known as ‘Ayṯoh-lo, mentioned in rabbinical sources and home to one of the 24 priestly families that settled in the Galilee after the Bar Kokhba revolt.[6]
A fish breeding pond, made in Roman era, and in use until the late Byzantine (5th–6th centuries CE) era have been excavated in the centre of Ilut, near a perennial spring. It was probably used for raising St. Peter's fish.[7] Other building remains, pottery and coins have also been found dating from the Roman and Byzantine eras.[3]
In 1517, the village was included in the Ottoman empire with the rest of Palestine, and in the 1596 tax-records it appeared as 'Aylut, located in the Nahiya of Tabariyya of the Liwa of Safad. The population was 9 households, all Muslim. They paid a tax rate of 25% on agricultural products, which included wheat, barley, fruit trees, goats and beehives, in addition to occasional revenues; a total of 200 Akçe.[8][9] A map from Napoleon's invasion of 1799 by Pierre Jacotin showed the place as an unnamed village.[10]
In 1838, it was noted as a Muslim and Greek Christian village in the Nazareth district.[11]
In 1859, the village had a population of 180 souls.[12]
In 1875 Victor Guérin found it to have no more than 200 inhabitants. The village was situated in a valley and on the lower flanks of a mound. Some gardens surrounded it, planted with fig and olive trees and surrounded by a cactus hedge. He further noticed, near a Oualy, the site of an old church which had been completely razed. There were only five or six sections of limestone columns lying on the ground. As for the Oualy, it seemed to have been built with materials from the church. The Moslems there worshipped inside it a tomb dedicated to Neby Louth; the same person whose tomb was found in Bani Na'im.[13]
A population list from about 1887 showed that Ailut had about 350 Muslim inhabitants.[14]
In the 1945 statistics the population was 1,310, all Muslims,[17] while the total land area was 17,557 dunams, according to an official land and population survey.[18] Of this, 370 were allocated for plantations and irrigable land, 7,501 for cereals,[19] while 30 dunams were classified as built-up areas.[20]
Israel
In 2013, an archaeological survey of the southernmost part of the site was conducted by Edna Amos on behalf of the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA).[21]
^Note that Rhode, 1979, p. 6Archived 2019-04-20 at the Wayback Machine writes that the register that Hütteroth and Abdulfattah studied from the Safad-district was not from 1595/6, but from 1548/9
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