Sar'a (), was a Palestinian Arab village located 25 km west of Jerusalem, depopulated in the 1948 war. The site lies on a hill, at an elevation of about above sea-level. History Bronze Age to Roman period Sar'a might have been built on the ancient Canaanites site of Zorah, which became a Danaite town. The Romans called it Sarea. Ottoman period Incorporated into the Ottoman Empire in 1517 with the rest of Palestine, Saris appears in the 1596 tax records as a village in the nahiya (subdistrict) of al-Ramla under the liwa' (district) of Gaza with a population 17 Muslim households, an estimated 94 persons. The villagers paid taxes on a number of crops, including wheat, barley, olives, goats and beehives a total of 6,000 Akçe. In 1838 Edward Robinson reported that the village belonged to the "Keis" faction, together with Laham Sheiks, of Bayt 'Itab. In 1863 Victor Guérin found it to be a village with some three hundred inhabitants. An Ottoman village list of about 1870 indicated 21 houses and a population of 59, though the population count included only men. C.R. Conder visited the site in 1873, recognizing it as "the ancient Zoreah," and described it as being "a little mud village." In 1883, the PEF's Survey of Western Palestine (SWP) wrote that it was a moderate sized village, standing on a low hill. A domed maqam, Neby Samat, stood to the south. SWP further noted "Caves exist here, and ruined tombs; one was a square chamber without loculi; another, a large tomb with a rock pillar, but now much broken, and the plan of the original form destroyed. This tomb is close to the Mukam of Neby Samit—a domed chamber, with an outer chamber to the west, and a door to the north, on which side is a courtyard, with a palm tree. The chamber has a mihrab, and by it are green rags, said to be the Prophet's clothes. In the court are two Arab graves. To the west are several kokim tombs (stone carved sepulchres) full of bones and skulls. Other caves, cisterns, and a wine-press, north of the Mukam, were observed." Sheikh Samit, or Samat, was said to have been the brother of Shemshun el Jabar, whose Neby was at Ishwa. J. Geikie described the shrine in the 1880s: "A mukam, or shrine, of a Mussulman saint stands on the south side of