Хиттин тарихы: Археологиялық қазбалар мен мәдени мұрасы

Archaeological excavations near the village have yielded pottery fragments from the Pottery Neolithic and Chalcolithic period.

An Early Bronze Age wall was excavated just west of the village. In the 4th century CE, it was a Jewish rabbinical town. It is described as having been near the base camp of Saladin's Ayyubid army, by Lieutenant Colonel Claude Conder in Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem (1897). Many prominent figures from the Islamic period in Palestine were born or buried in Hittin, according to early Arab geographers such as Yaqut al Hamawi (1179–1229) and al Ansari al Dimashqi (1256–1327), who himself was called the Shaykh of Hittin. 'Ali al Dawadari, the writer, Quranic exegetist, and calligrapher, died in the village in 1302. In 1646, the bulaydah (بُـلَـيْـدَة, "small village") was visited by Evliya Çelebi, who described it as follows: "It is a village in the territory of Safad, consisting of 200 Muslim houses. No Druzes live here. It is like a flourishing little town (bulayda) abounding with vineyards, orchards and gardens. Water and air are refreshing. A large fair is held there once a week, when ten thousand men would gather from the neighbourhood to sell and buy. It is situated in a spacious valley, bordered on both sides by low rocks. There is a mosque, a public bath and a caravanserei in it." Çelebi also reported that there was a shrine called the Teyké Mughraby, inhabited by over one hundred dervishes, which held the grave of Sheikh 'Imād ed dīn, of the family of the prophet Shu'eib, who was reputed to have lived for two hundred years. Around this time and until the late 18th century, Hittin was a small village in the autonomous sheikhdom of Zahir al Umar. In 1767, Zahir's son Sa'id sought to control Hittin and nearby Tur'an, but was defeated by his father. Nonetheless, Zahir granted Sa'id both villages when he pardoned him. A map from Napoleon's invasion of 1799 by Pierre Jacotin showed the place, named as Hattin. Johann Ludwig Burckhardt, a Swiss traveller to Palestine around 1817, noted Hittin as a village, while in 1838 Edward Robinson described it as a small village of stone houses. William McClure Thomson, who visited in the 1850s, found "gigantic" hedges of cactus surrounding Hittin. He reported that visiting the local shrine was considered a cure for insanity. In 1863 H. B. Tristram, wrote about the "bright faces and bright colours" he saw there, and the "peculiar" costumes: "long tight gowns, or cassocks, of scarlet silk, with diagonal yellow stripes, and generally a bright red and blue or yellow jacket over them; while their cheeks were encircled by dollars and piastres, after Nazareth fashion, and some of the more wealthy wore necklaces of gold coins, with a doubloon for pendant in front." In 1875 Victor Guérin visited the village, mentioning in his writings that there was a local tradition that alleged that the tomb of Jethro (Neby Chaʾīb), the father in law of Moses, was to be found in the village. In 1881, the PEF's Survey of Western Palestine described Hittin as a large well built village of stone, surrounded by fruit and olive trees. It had an estimated 400 700 villagers, all Muslim, who cultivated the surrounding plain. A population list from about 1887 showed Hattin to have about 1,350 inhabitants; 100 Jews and 1,250 Muslims. An elementary school was established in the village around 1897. increasing in the 1931 census to 931, all Muslims, in a total of 190 houses. In 1932 Sheikh Izz ad Din al Qassam and the local Palestinian leadership affiliated with the Istiqlal party inaugurated a celebration on the anniversary of Saladin's victory in Hittin. Hittin Day, held on August 27 of that year in the courtyard of a school in Haifa, was intended to be an anti imperialist rally. It was attended by thousands of people from Palestine, Lebanon, Damascus, and Transjordan. The speeches delivered at the event centered around the independence of the Arab world and the importance of unity between Arab Muslims and Christians. In 1945, Hittin had a population of 1,190 Muslims The built up area of the village was 70 dunams and it was populated entirely by Arabs.

In 1948 the village mukhtar was Ahmad ´Azzam Abu Radi. According to the villagers, they did not feel threatened by their Jewish neighbours at Kfar Hittim, who had visited in November 1947 after the UN vote in favor of the United Nations Partition Plan, and assured the villagers they did not want war. There were 50 men in the village who had rifles, with 25 50 rounds of ammunition each. On the night of July 16–17, almost all the inhabitants of the village evacuated. Many left for Sallama, between Deir Hanna and Maghar, leaving behind a few elderly people and 30 35 militiamen. When the villagers tried to return, they were chased off. On one occasion, some men and pack animals were killed. The villagers remained at Salamah for almost a month, but as their food supply dwindled and their hope of returning faded, they left together for Lebanon.

In 1949 and 1950, the Jewish villages of Arbel and Kfar Zeitim were founded on the lands of Hittin. In the 1950s, the Druze community in Israel was given official custodianship over the Jethro shrine and 100 dunams of land around it. A request to build housing there for Druze soldiers was rejected. The Druze annual pilgrimage continued to be held and was officially recognized as a religious holiday by Israel in 1954. According to Ilan Pappé, a resident of Deir Hanna unsuccessfully applied to hold a summer camp on the site of the Hittin mosque, which he hoped to restore. The land is currently used as grazing pasture by the nearby kibbutzim. According to tradition, the mosque was built by Saladin in 1187 to commemorate his victory over the Crusaders. In 2007, an Israeli Palestinian advocacy organization, Zochrot, protested development plans that encroach on the site and threaten to "swallow up the abandoned remains of the Hittin village."

Ali of Herat wrote (c. 1173) that both Jethro and his wife were buried in Hittin. Yaqut al Hamawi (1179–1229) wrote that another shrine near Arsuf that claimed to be the tomb of Shu'aib was misidentified. Sunni Muslims and Druze would make ziyarat pilgrimages to Hittin to the Tomb of Shu'ayb, and the Druze celebration at the site attracted members of their religion from other parts of the region of Syria. In 1945 the population was estimated at 1,190 Arabs. The village had a number of large and influential families; Rabah, 'Azzam, Chabaytah, Sa'adah, Sha'ban, Dahabra, and Houran.