An official Ottoman village list from about the same year showed that Abu Dis had 52 houses and a population of 326, though the population count included only men. By the old village mosque, known locally as Maqam Salah ad-Din, there is a grave with a slab of marble, with a poem written in "elegant naskhi script", dated to 1878. In 1883, the PEF's Survey of Western Palestine described it as a "village of moderate size in a conspicuous position on a bare flat ridge, with deep valleys round it. The water-supply is from cisterns. Rock-cut tombs exists to the west. In the late 19th century, the Sheikh of Abu Dis, Rasheed Erekat, promised to guarantee the safety of European tourists and pilgrims on the journey down to Jericho and the River Jordan. According to a 19th-century traveler, the "only way of accomplishing the journey to the Jordan ...(is) by paying the statutory tribute-money to the Sheikh of Abu Dees. This man has the privilege of extracting some sixteen shillings from each traveller who goes down to Jericho...He will send a man, possibly his own son along with you... arrayed in gorgeous apparel, and armed with sword and revolver." In 1896 the population of Abu Dis was estimated to be about 600 persons. British Mandate era In the 1922 census of Palestine conducted by the British Mandate authorities, Abu Diz had a population of 1,029, all Muslims, increasing in the 1931 census to a population of 1,297, still all Muslims, in 272 houses. In the 1945 statistics, Abu Dis had a population of 1,940 Muslims, with 27,896 dunams of land, according to an official land and population survey. Of this, 4,981 dunams were used for cereals, while 158 dunams were built-up (urban) land. Between 1922 and 1947, the population of Abu Dis increased by 110%. The town suffered extensive damage in the 1927 Jericho earthquake. All the homes were damaged and every cistern was cracked. Since Abu Dis depended on rain-water cisterns for its water supply, this caused great hardship. al-Eizariya (Bethany), half a mile away, suffered little damage. Jordanian era According to the UN General Assembly Resolution 194 in 1948, Abu Dis was to be the most Eastern part of the corpus separatum Jerusalem area. However, in the wake of the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, and after the 1949 Armistice Agreements, Abu Dis came under Jordanian rule. It was annexed