Nabi Salih

Nabi Salih (Arabic: النبي صالح‎) is a small Palestinian village in the Ramallah and al-Bireh Governorate in the central West Bank, located 20 kilometers northwest of Ramallah. It had over 530 inhabitants in 2007.

History

In 1596 the village appeared (with the name Dayr Salih) in the Ottoman tax registers as being in the nahiya of Quds in the liwa of Quds. It had a population of 2 households, both Muslim. Taxes were paid on wheat, barley, summer crops and occasional revenues

The French explorer Victor Guérin visited the place twice in the 19th century. In 1863 he scaled the nearby height, and in 1870 he noted that the place was named after a person who "is venerated there under a koubbeh partially constructed with regular stonework with an appearance of antiquity." In 1870 Guérin estimated that the village had 150 inhabitants, while an Ottoman village list from about the same year showed that "Nebi Salih" had 5 houses and a population of 22, though the population count included only men. In The Survey of Western Palestine (1882), Neby Saleh was described as "a village of moderate size on a ridge, with a small mosque and a well to the south. A spring exists about three-quarters of a mile east."