Qabalan is located 13.4 kilometers (8.3 mi) south of Nablus. It is bordered by Aqraba and Jurish to the east, Talfit and As Sawiya to the south, As Sawiya and Yatma to the west, and Beita and Osarin to the north.[3]
Qabalan sits atop a slope that descends into a small, fertile valley.[4]
The SWP noted that: "the ruin to the east [of the village] consists of heaps of stones".[5]Finkelstein noted that "most of the area of the present village is relatively modern".[4]
Ottoman era
In 1517, the village was included in the Ottoman empire with the rest of Palestine, and it appeared in the 1596 tax-records as Qabalan, located in the Nahiya of Jabal Qubal of the Liwa of Nablus. The population was 4 households, all Muslim. They paid a fixed tax rate of 33,3% on agricultural products, such as wheat, barley, olive trees, goats and beehives, in addition to occasional revenues and a fixed tax for people of Nablus area; a total of 2,410 akçe.[6] Sherds from the early Ottoman era have also been found here.[4]
In 1838 Edward Robinson noted Kubalan on the south side of the valley, "surrounded by vineyards and large groves of olive and fig trees."[7] It was located in El-Beitawy district, east of Nablus.[8]
In 1882, the PEF's Survey of Western Palestine (SWP) described Kubalan as: "a village of moderate size, on high ground, with olives round it, and wells."[9]
In the 1945 statistics Qabalan had a population of 1,310, all Muslims,[12] with 8,290 dunams of land, according to an official land and population survey.[13] Of this, 3,948 dunams were plantations and irrigable land, 2,383 were used for cereals,[14] while 72 dunams were built-up land.[15]
Since the Six-Day War in 1967, Qabalan has been under Israeli occupation along with the rest of the Palestinian territories.
After the 1995 accords, 67% of the village land is in Area B, while the remaining 33% is in Area C. There have been a number of attacks on the people of Qabalan, their land and property from the nearby Israeli settlements.[17][18]
Demography
According to the geographer David Grossman, the inhabitants of Qabalan trace their origins to the town of Halhul near Hebron, the village of Kafr Atiyya near Nablus, and areas in present-day Syria.[19]
^Grossman, D. (1986). "Oscillations in the Rural Settlement of Samaria and Judaea in the Ottoman Period". in Shomron studies. Dar, S., Safrai, S., (eds). Tel Aviv: Hakibbutz Hameuchad Publishing House. p. 356
