The village stood on the steep slope of a mountain, facing west, and overlooked deep wadis. A ravine ran in an east-west direction along its southern perimeter. A small hill, on which a school and a convalescent hospital were located, separated al-Jura from the village of 'Ayn Karim. A secondary road linked it to a highway leading to Jerusalem, and dirt paths connected it to surrounding villages. In the late nineteenth century, al-Jura was described as a small hamlet built on the slope of a ridge with olive trees growing below it. 
The village plan was originally rectangular. New construction, however, developed in a way that changed the overall plan into an arc. Its houses were built of stone. The people of al-Jura, most of whom were Muslims, relied on the neighboring village of 'Ayn Karim and on Jerusalem for many of their services. They drew their drinking water from a spring that was west of the village and relied on other springs to the west and southwest for irrigating their fruit orchards and vegetable fields. The village was known for the high quality of its fruit, especially grapes. In 1944/45 a total of 846 dunums was allotted to cereals; 1,125 dunums were irrigated or used for orchards. East of the village lay Khirbat Sa'ida (162128) and 'Ayn al-Jadida (164129) which contained evidence of a Byzantine and, later, a Crusader presence on the site. Khirbat al-Qusur (163128), which is identified with the sixteenth-century village of Qusur , was also nearby.
