Part of the Hebron Governorate of Palestine, it is located 13 kilometers southwest of Hebron and about 5 km northwest of as-Samu. Rabud had a population of 2,262 in the 2007 census by the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics (PCBS).[4] The principal families are the Huraibat, Quteinah, al-Uqela and Shanan.[5]
Rabud is thought to lie on the site of the ancient JudeanKohanic city of Kiryat Sefer or Debir.[6] By the seventh century BCE, the site of Khirbet Rabud had grown to a relatively large town that featured both a fortified city and an unwalled settlement. Both were razed when the First Temple was destroyed (587-6 BCE). It saw limited settlement during the Persian period.[7]
In 1863, Victor Guérin found here "caves and cisterns dug into the rock, ...small demolished houses and, on the highest point, the remains of a roughly built tower". North and south-east of this place were two pierced walls, with many caves. Guérin named them Heurkan Beni Hasan.[9][10]
The 1931 census of Palestine wrote that "the village in the Hebron sub-district commonly known as Dura is a congeries of neighbouring localities each of which has a distinctive name; and, while Dura is a remarkable example of neighbourly agglutination, the phenomenon is not infrequent in other villages". The total of 70 locations, among them Kh. Rabud, listed in the report had 1538 occupied houses and a population of 7255 Muslims.[11]
A village council was established by the Palestinian National Authority in 1993 to administer Rabud's civil affairs and provide limited municipal services.[5] There is currently one mosque, Salah ad-Din Mosque, which serves the village.
^Trevor Bryce (2009). The Routledge Handbook of the Peoples and Places of Ancient Western Asia: From the Early Bronze Age to the Fall of the Persian Empire. Taylor & Francis. p. 588. ISBN 978-0-415-39485-7
