It has been suggested that Rujeib was the Crusader village Ragabam, which was one of the villages exchanged with Bethany by King Baldwin I and given as a fief to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.[8][9] Pottery from the Crusader era have also been found here.[5]
Ottoman era
In 1517, the village was included in the Ottoman empire with the rest of Palestine, and in the 1596 tax-records it appeared as Rujib, located in the Nahiya of Jabal Qubal in the Nablus Sanjak. The population was 16 households and 1 bachelors, all Muslim. They paid a fixed tax rate of 33.3% on agricultural products, such as wheat, barley, summer crops, olive trees, goats and beehives, a press for olive oil or grape syrup, in addition to occasional revenues and a fixed tax for people of Nablus area; a total of 3,600 Akçe.[10]
In 1838, Raujib was noted in the El-Beitawy district, east of Nablus, together with Beita, Haudela and Awarta.[11] In 1850/51 de Saulcy noted Roujib on a lower hill than Beit Dejan.[12]
In 1870, Victor Guérin noted that Rujeib was a "village of three hundred inhabitants more, on a hill whose flanks were formerly, in several places, exploited as a quarry. Cactus hedges serve as enclosures for some gardens."[13]
In the 1945 statistics, Rujeib had a population of 390 Muslims[17] while the total land area was 7,038 dunams, according to an official land and population survey.[18] Of this, 235 dunams were used for plantations and irrigable land, 3,410 for cereals,[19] while 30 dunams were classified as built-up (urban) areas.[20]
In 1961, the population of Rujeib was 628 persons.[21]
Post 1967
Since the Six-Day War in 1967, Rujeib has been under Israeli occupation. The population in the 1967 census conducted by Israel was 831, of whom 30 originated from the Israeli territory.[22]
After the 1995 accord 28% of Rujeib’s lands were classified as Area B, the remaining 72% as Area C. Israel has confiscated 169 dunams of land from Rujeib for construction of the Israeli settlement of Itamar.[23]
Demography
Origins
Residents of Rujeib have their origins and family connections in the village of Beita.[24]
^Grossman, D. (1986). "Oscillations in the Rural Settlement of Samaria and Judaea in the Ottoman Period". in Shomron studies. Dar, S., Safrai, S., (eds). Tel Aviv: Hakibbutz Hameuchad Publishing House. p. 356
Bull, Robert J.; Edward F. Campbell (1968). "The Sixth Campaign at Balâṭah (Shechem)". Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research. 190 (190): 2–41. doi:10.2307/1356191. JSTOR1356191. S2CID222441522.
