F.M. Abel and
Avi-Yonah both identified Saffa with the village of
Sapphō (''
), which, according to the first century AD Jewish historian Josephus, was destroyed by Arab troops serving in the army of Varus in 4 BC. It has been proposed identifying Saffa with Casale Saphet'' of the
Crusader era.
Ottoman era In the early
Ottoman census of 1525-1526, it was not mentioned, but in 1538-1539,
Saffa was located in the
nahiya of
Quds, and named as
Mazra, or cultivated land. In 1838 it was noted as a
Muslim village, located in the
Beni Harith district, west of Jerusalem. In 1870,
Victor Guérin noted that: "This village occupies a high plateau; it contains four hundred inhabitants. Some stones, scattered or embedded in Arab buildings, and numerous excavations in the rock, such as
cisterns, tombs, quarries and subterranean vaults, proves that the present Saffa succeeded an ancient locality." An Ottoman village list of about the same year showed that Saffa had 200 inhabitants with 67 houses, though the population count included only the men. In 1883 the
PEF's
Survey of Western Palestine described
Suffa: "A small village standing high on a ridge, with a
well to the east and a sacred place to the south." In 1896 the population of Safa was estimated to be about 564 persons.
British Mandate era In the
1922 census of Palestine, conducted by the
British Mandate authorities, Saffa had a population of 495 Muslims, increasing in the
1931 census to 644 Muslims, in 143 houses. In the
1945 statistics the population was 790 Muslims, while the total land area was 9,602
dunams, according to an official land and population survey. Of this, 2,536 were used for plantations and irrigable land, 2,975 for cereals, while 99 dunams were classified as built-up areas. File:Saffa 1944.jpg|Saffa 1944 1:20,000 from 1919 survey File:Burj 1945.jpg|Saffa 1945 1:250,000
Jordanian era In the wake of the
1948 Arab–Israeli War, and after the
1949 Armistice Agreements, Saffa came under
Jordanian rule. It was
annexed by Jordan in 1950. In 1961, the population of Saffa was 1,364.
1967-present After the
Six-Day War in 1967, Saffa has been under
Israeli occupation. After the
1995 accords, 12.9% of village land was classified as
Area B, and the remaining 87.1% as
Area C. Israel has confiscated land from Saffa in order to construct six
Israeli settlements: • 814 dunams for
Kfar Rut, • 781 dunams for
Shilat, • 682 dunams for
Menora, • 471 dunams for
Makkabim, • 441 dunams for
Lapid, and • 5 dunams for
Hashmona'im. == Religious sites ==