Bir Ma'in

The village stood on rolling terrain on the edge of the western foothills of the Ramallah Mountains. It was linked by a secondary road to the Ramla-Ramallah highway (which passed the village on the northeast), and by other roads to several neighboring villages. Bir Ma'in was built around an old well that bore the same name. It was called Bermenayn by the Crusaders and was a fief of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in the twelfth century. In 1596, Bir Ma'in was a village in the nahiya of Ramla (liwa' of Gaza) with a population of 165. It paid taxes on a number of crops, including wheat, barley, olives, and sesame, as well as on other types of produce and property, such as goats, beehives, and a press that was used for processing either olives or grapes.

In the late nineteenth century, Bir Ma'in was described as a small hamlet situated on high ground. In modern times it was divided into two sections, separated by a paved street. The northern section was rectangular; the southern one had a semi-circular plan. The houses were made of mud and stone, and many houses were built during the final years of the Mandate, especially in the northwest. The village had a mosque-Bir Ma'in's population was predominantly Muslim-and, next to it, an elementary school that was founded in 1934. Its land was well endowed with ground water, which permitted the villagers to grow a variety of crops, such as grain, vegetables, grapes, figs, plums, almonds, and olives. Olives were planted on 146 dunums.1n 1944/45 a total of 2,880 dunums was allocated to cereals; 176 dunums were irrigated or used for orchards. Three khirbas next to the village contained foundations of houses, fragments of columns, cisterns, caves carved in rock, burial places, and a large square corral.