Al-Judeida is an ancient village, where Byzantine ceramics have been found.[4]Zertal notes that the sherds from the Byzantine era were at the edge of the hilltop upon which al-Judeida stands.[5]
Pottery sherds found in the village mostly date back to the medieval and Ottoman eras. During Crusader rule, in 1168, al-Judeida was an estate called Gidideh.[5]
Like all of Palestine, al-Judeida was incorporated into the Ottoman Empire in 1517. In the 1596 Ottoman tax registers, al-Judeida was an entirely Muslim village with a population of 10 families,[5] located in the Nahiya Jabal Sami, in the Nablus Sanjak. The inhabitants paid a fixed tax-rate of 33.3% on agricultural products, including wheat, barley, summer crops, olive trees, goats and beehives, in addition to occasional revenues and a press for grape syrup or olive oil; a total of 3,500 akçe.[6]
Most of the buildings in the old core of Judeida date back to the 16th and 17th centuries.[5]
In 1838, Edward Robinson noted the village when he travelled in the region, as bordering the extremely fertile Marj Sanur.[7] He listed it as part of the District of Haritheh, north of Nablus.[8]
In 1870, French traveler Victor Guérin visited al-Judeida, describing it as being amid "gardens of fig trees, pomegranates and olives. It seems to be an ancient site, because of the many rock hewn cisterns and the well-shaped stones contained in the walls of its 35 houses."[5][9] In 1882, it was described by the PEF's Survey of Western Palestine as "a good-sized village on flat ground, with a few olives".[5][10]
In the 1922 British census, Al-Judeida had a population of 361, all Muslims,[11] increasing in the 1931 census to 569 inhabitants, still all Muslims, living in a total of 106 houses.[12]
In the 1945 statistics, the population was 830, all Muslims,[13] with 6,360 dunams of land, according to an official land and population survey.[14] Of the village's lands, 2,211 dunams were used for plantations and irrigable land, 2,850 dunams for cereals,[15] while 20 dunams were built-up (urban) areas.[16]
Al-Judeida is situated at the southern edge of the Marj Sanur valley on a small hilltop with an elevation of about 425 meters above sea level. The old core of al-Judeida is in the center of the village and is relatively small with an area of 14 dunams. It has narrow alleys that meet at a square in the old core's center.[5] The nearest localities are Siris to the southwest, Meithalun to the northwest, Sir to the north, Aqqaba to the northeast and Tubas to the east.
Al-Judeida had a population of 3,639 in the 1997 census by the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics (PCBS). Palestinian refugees and their descendants accounted for 17.5% of the inhabitants.[21] In the 2007 PCBS census, al-Judeida's population grew to 4,738. The number of households was 923, with each household containing an average of between five members. Women made up 49.8% of the population and men 50.2%.[3]
^Government of Palestine, Department of Statistics, 1945, p. 16.
^Government of Palestine, Department of Statistics. Village Statistics, April, 1945. Quoted in Hadawi, 1970, p. 54Archived 2012-02-29 at the Wayback Machine.
^Government of Palestine, Department of Statistics. Village Statistics, April, 1945. Quoted in Hadawi, 1970, p. 99.
^Government of Palestine, Department of Statistics. Village Statistics, April, 1945. Quoted in Hadawi, 1970, p. 149.
^Government of Jordan, Department of Statistics, 1964, p. 25
