History
The town is named for the nearby tomb of Istiya which, according to ethnographer Tawfiq Canaan and historian Moshe Sharon, is the Arabic name for Isaiah. In 1394 Deir Istiya was required to supply lentils, olive oil and flour as a religious endowment (waqf) to the Ibrahimi Mosque in Hebron on the orders of the Mamluk sultan Barquq. Since the Mamluk era in Palestine, Deir Istiya has been a center of olive-based agriculture. Today, it possesses one of the largest areas of land planted with olive groves, at nearly 10,000 dunams.
The village was a part of Sanjak Nablus in the Ottoman period beginning in the early 16th-century. In 1596, Dayr Istya appeared in Ottoman tax registers being in the Nahiya of Jabal Qubal of the Liwa of Nablus. It had a population of 133 households and 12 bachelors, all Muslim. Villagers paid taxes on wheat, barley, summer crops, olives, goats and/or beehives. In the early 17th-century Deir Istiya and nearby Beit Wazan were the ancestral seats of the Qasim family who controlled Jamma'in and most of eastern Sanjak Nablus. The Qasim fortified and made Deir Istiya their primary southern base. The Rayyan clan from Majdal Yaba also exercised some influence over the village. During the "civil war" period in the Nablus area (1853-57), the Qasim family led by Qasim al-Ahmad vacated Deir Istiya and were said to have sought refuge with the Nimr family in Nablus.
In the second half of the 19th-century, the village was ruled by the Abu Hijleh clan, who continue to live there. The Abu Hijleh were dominant in the area, and had great wealth. The Zidan family was also prominent and both families had shared control of Deir Istiya. In 1870 French scholar Victor Guérin remarked that Deir Istiya had been much larger and that it was probably inhabited since "ancient times," noting that in the Mosque of Deir Istiya were marble columns (some with chiseled out crucifixes) dating back to the Christian era in Palestine. In 1882 Deir Istiya was described as "a large village on high ground, surrounded with olive-groves, and supplied by cisterns."
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