al-Sawafir al-Shamaliyya

The village stood on the coastal plain, a short distance to the north of a highway between al-Majdal, Ramla, and the Jerusalem–Jaffa highway. The second, adjectival, part of its name, al-Shamaliyya ('northern') distinguished it from two other neighboring villages with the same first name, al-Sawafir. Together they formed an approximately right-angled triangle, with a northwest-southeast hypotenuse. Al-Sawafir al-Shamaliyya may have been located on the site of the biblical Shafir (Micah 1:11), mentioned by Eusebius (A.D. 266–340), the Palestine-born Byzantine historian. Eusebius said that in his days it was a beautiful town between Ascalon and Bayt Jibrin . Most modern scholars, however, locate Shafir at Khirbat al-Qawm rather than at the site of al-Sawafir al-Shamaliyya. The Crusader name of the village was Zeophir; they recorded that it was the property of the Bishop of Jerusalem in the early twelfth century. The village appears in the Ottoman records for the sixteenth century as 'Sawafir al-Halil.' It belonged to the nahiya of Gaza (liwa' of Gaza) and had a population of 616. The village paid taxes on wheat, barley, olive trees, and fruit trees.

In the late nineteenth century, the village of al-Sawafir al-Shamaliyya had several small gardens and wells. Many of its houses were built of adobe, although a few were made of stone. The residents were Muslim, and the village had its own mosque but shared a school with the other two villages. The number of students in the school was about 280 in the mid-1940s. Agriculture, which was mainly rainfed, constituted the backbone of the economy, and grain, citrus, grapes, and apricots were grown. In 1944/45 a total of 481 dunums was devoted to citrus and bananas and 4,632 dunums were allocated to cereals; 10 dunums were irrigated or used for orchards. Al-Sawafir al-Gharbiyya contained archaeological remains, such as pieces of marble and the shafts and capitals of ancient columns.