Pottery
sherds from
Iron Age II,
Persian,
Byzantine,
Byzantine/
Umayyad and
Mamluk era have been found here.
Ottoman era Kharbatha Bani Harith became part of the
Ottoman Empire in 1517 with all of
Palestine. In 1552, 'Kharbatha' was an inhabited village, and its tax revenues were endowed to the
Haseki Sultan Imaret in
Jerusalem. Administratively, the village belonged to the (subdistrict) of
Ramla in the
Gaza Sanjak. In 1596 it appeared under the name of 'Harabta' in the Ottoman
tax registers. It had a population of 29 Muslim and 4 Christian households. They paid a fixed tax-rate of 25% on agricultural products, including wheat, barley, summer crops, vineyards, fruit trees, goats and beehives, in addition to occasional revenues; a total of 2,200
Akçe. All of the revenues went to a
Waqf. In 1870, the French traveler
Victor Guérin found the village to have about 200 inhabitants. He also noted the remains of a church, which has been dated to the
Byzantine era (4th–7th centuries CE). By the beginning of the 20th century, residents from Kharbatha settled
Shilta near
al-Ramla, establishing it as a dependency – or satellite village – of their home village.
British Mandate era In the
1922 census of Palestine, conducted by the
British Mandate authorities, Kharbatha Bani Harith had a population of 338, all Muslims. In the
1931 census the population increased to 469, still all Muslim, living in 102 houses. In the
1945 statistics the population of Kharbatha Bani Harith was 650, all Muslims, who owned 7,120
dunams of land according to an official land and population survey. Of these, 2,788 dunams were used as plantations and irrigable land and 591 for grain fields, while the built-up area consisted of 9 dunams.
Jordanian era In the wake of the
1948 Arab–Israeli War, and after the
1949 Armistice Agreements, Kharbatha Bani Harith came under
Jordanian rule. The Jordanian census of 1961 found 835 inhabitants and the village was listed as 'Kh. Harithiya'.
1967–present After the
Six-Day War in 1967, Kharbatha Bani Harith came under
Israeli occupation. After the
1995 accords, 942 dunums of village land were classified
Area B, the remaining 6,200 dunums as
Area C. According to
ARIJ, 833 dunams of village land has been confiscated by Israel for the Israeli settlement of
Modi'in Illit. ==See also==