In the early 18th century the scholar and Sufi Abd al-Ghani al-Nabulsi mentioned the khan , the domed well which still exists , and a nearby mosque . A map from Napoleon 's invasion of 1799 by Pierre Jacotin showed the place , named as '' Puits de Joseph '' . The Swiss traveller Johann Ludwig Burckhardt observed during his visit around 1816 that the khan was falling into ruin . The mosque was dismantled around the beginning of the 19th century and the stones used to build a sheep fence closed to the khan . The village by that time appears to have had few inhabitants , possibly because the well was no longer usable after the Galilee earthquake of 1837 , leaving only one small , seasonal source of water nearby . An 1877 survey of the Galilee carried out by the Palestine Exploration Fund stated : “ '' … Our next camp was at Khan Jubb Yusuf , where we arrived on the 4th of April . The Khan is a large building falling into ruins on the main road to Damascus . There was no village near , the country being occupied by Bedawin of the Semakiyeh and Zenghariyeh tribes . '' At the time of the 1931 census , Jubb Yusuf had 17 occupied houses and a population of 93 Muslims
Galilee earthquake of 1837
Galilee earthquake of 1837
Jubb Yusuf