Ceramics from the
Byzantine era have been found here.
Ottoman era Al-Ras was incorporated into the
Ottoman Empire in 1517 with all of
Palestine, and in a
sijill (royal order) from 941/1535 an unspecified share of the village revenue was given to the
waqf for
Ribat al-Mansuri (com) in
Jerusalem. In 1596 the village appeared in the
tax registers as being in the
Nahiya of Bani Sa'b of the
Liwa of
Nablus. It had a population of 22 households, all
Muslim. The villagers paid a fixed tax-rate of 33,3% on various agricultural products, including wheat, barley, summer crops, olive trees, goats and/or beehives in addition to occasional revenues, a press for olive oil or grape syrup, and a fixed tax for people of Nablus area; a total of 6,100
akçe. In the 16th century, the neighboring village of al-Majdal (near modern
Tsur Natan) was listed as inhabited, but it became abandoned before the 19th century, with its land being absorbed by Kafr Sur. In 1838,
Robinson noted
Kefr Sur as a village in ''Beni Sa'ab'' district, west of
Nablus. In the 1860s, the Ottoman authorities granted the village an agricultural plot of land called Ghabat Kafr Sur in the former confines of the Forest of Arsur (Ar. Al-Ghaba) in the coastal plain, west of the village. During this British Mandate period, this territory developed into a village called
Ghabat Kafr Sur. In 1870/1871 (1288
AH), an Ottoman census listed the village with 139
Household in the
nahiya (sub-district) of Bani Sa'b. In 1882 the
PEF's
Survey of Western Palestine (SWP) described
Kefr Sur as: "A small stone village on a knoll, supplied by
cisterns." Around the turn of the 20th century, Kafr Sur and its
Ghaba were areas in which the Hannun Family of Tulkarm/
Saffarin owned extensive estates. The Hannuns fostered close ties with the clans inhabiting Kafr Sur.
British Mandate era In the
1922 census of Palestine conducted by the
British Mandate authorities,
Kufr Sur had a population of 271 Muslims, increasing in the
1931 census to 559; 553 Muslims and 6 Christians, living in 128 houses. The 1931 numbers included the
Bayarat Hannoun and the Arab el Balawin. In the
1945 statistics the population of Kafr Sur was 460; 450 Muslims and 10 Christians, with 10,926
dunams of land according to an official land and population survey. Of this, 878 dunams were plantations and irrigable land, 2,644 were used for cereals, while 14 dunams were built-up (urban) land. File:Kafr Sur 1942.jpg|Kafr Sur 1942 1:20,000 File:Taiyiba 1945.jpg|Kafr Sur 1945 1:250,000
Jordanian era In the wake of the
1948 Arab–Israeli War, and after the
1949 Armistice Agreements, Kafr Sur came under
Jordanian rule. In 1961, the population of Kafr Sur was 656.
Post 1967 Since the
Six-Day War in 1967, Kafr Sur has been under
Israeli occupation. ==References==