In pre-Roman and Roman times the settlement was referred to as "Abenezer", and may have been the location of the
biblical site
Eben-Ezer.(). The name Dayr indicates that this was the site of a Christian
monastery.
Ottoman era In 1596, Dayr Aban appeared in
Ottoman tax registers as being in the
Nahiya of Quds of the
Liwa of
Quds. It had a population of 23 Muslim households and 23 Christian households; that is, an estimated 127 persons. They paid a fixed tax rate of 33,3% on agricultural products, such as wheat, barley, olives, and goats or beehives; a total of 9,700
Akçe.
Victor Guérin described it in 1863 as being a large village, and its adjacent valley "strewn with sesame." An Ottoman village list from about 1870 found that the village had a population of 443, in a total of 135 houses, though the population count included men, only. In 1883, the
PEF's
Survey of Western Palestine described Dayr Aban as "a large village on the lower slope of a high ridge, with a well to the north, and olives on the east, west, and north. This place no doubt represents the fourth century site of Ebenezer (I Sam. IV. I) which is mentioned in the Onomasticon (s.v. Ebenezer) as near Beth Shemesh. The village is 2 miles east of 'Ain Shems." In another article, he mentioned that women in Dayr Aban have small
crosses tattooed on their foreheads.
Yitzhak Ben-Zvi mentioned a local tradition according which elderly Muslim women at Dayr Aban preserved old miniature crosses.
H. Stephan wrote that
persecutions brought Christians from Dayr Aban to seek refuge at Beit Jala and
Ramallah, where they stayed in touch with family members that continued to live in the village as Muslims.
British Mandate era In the
1922 census of Palestine, conducted by the
British Mandate authorities, Dayr Aban had a population of 1,214 inhabitants, all
Muslims, increasing in the
1931 census to 1,534 inhabitants, in 321 houses. In the
1945 statistics, the village had a total population of 2,100 Arabs; 10 Christians and 2,090 Muslims, while 54 dunams were built-up (urban) Arab land. Dayr Aban had a mosque and a pipeline transporting water from 'Ayn Marjalayn, 5 km to the east. The village became depopulated on 19–20 October 1948, after a military assault during
Operation Ha-Har. Through the second half of 1948, the
IDF, under
Ben-Gurion’s tutelage, continued to destroy Arab villages, including Dayr Aban on 22 October 1948. After the war, the ruin of Dayr Abban remained under Israeli control under the terms of the
1949 Armistice Agreement between Israel and
Jordan, until such time that the agreement was dissolved in 1967. The
moshav of
Mahseya was later established near the site of the old village, on the land of Dayr Aban, as was
Tzora,
Beit Shemesh and
Yish'i. October 1948 ==Etymology==