and west, 22 feet north and south. The apses have been apparently built up. There were three bays of arches, and in the side walls are small doors with lintels". D. Pringle dismissed the possibility that this was a former church, and suggest instead that it was an Umayyad palace building, or possibly dating from the Abbasid era. Middle ages In 1152, during the Crusader era, a confrere of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, Baldwin of Tournai, was granted a prebend relating to juxta Gabeon. In 1172, after the fall of Jerusalem, Saladin halted at Al Jib, before continuing to Beit Nuba. El-Jib was described by the geographer Yâkût in 1225 as having two fortresses standing close together. Ottoman era By the 1550s the agricultural revenues of Al Jib belonged to the endowment (waqf) of Mamluk Sultan Inal (r. 1453-61) in Egypt. However, three tribes of the Hutaym Bedouin were affiliated with the village. The taxes they paid plus levies normally earmarked for the military were in the 1550s designated for the waqf of Hasseki Sultan Imaret in Jerusalem. In the 1596 tax-records it appeared as Jib, located in the Nahiya of Jabal Quds of the Liwa of Al-Quds. The population was 103 households, large enough to be divided into four quarters. The villagers paid a fixed tax-rate of 33,3% on agricultural products, including wheat, barley, olive trees, fruit trees, grape syrup or molasse, in addition to occasional revenues, goats and beehives; a total of 16,060 Akçe. In 1838 Edward Robinson described it as a village of moderate size, with the houses standing very irregularly and unevenly. He further noted "One large massive building still remains, perhaps a castle or tower of strength. The lower rooms a vaulted with round arches of hewn stones fitted together with great exactness. The stones outside are large; and the whole appearance is that of antiquity." El-Jib was further noted as a Muslim village, part of the El-Kuds district. In 1863 Victor Guérin found that Al Jib had 500 inhabitants, while an Ottoman village list from about 1870 found that the village had a population of 219, in a total of 65 houses, though that population count included men, only. In 1883, the PEF's Survey of Western Palestine (SWP) described it as "on the end of a hill, rising 300 feet above the valley. On the south is a narrow plain, and there