An Naqura is located 7.57 km northwest of Nablus. It is bordered by Zawata to the east, Ijnisinya to the east and north, Sabastiya to the north, Deir Sharaf to the west and south, and Beit Iba to the south.[5]
It has been suggested that An-Naqura was the village named Aqbara or Aquira, in the 1596 Ottomantax records. It had 23 households and 5 bachelors, all Muslim.[7]
In 1667, Anthimus mentions a Christian population in this village, though it had no church.[8]
In 1838 Robinson noted the village as en-Nakurah in the Wady esh-Sha'ir district, west of Nablus.[9][10]
In 1870, Victor Guérin noted it as a village on a hill, with 300 inhabitants, where ancient stones were used in the house-walls.[11]
In 1870/1871 (1288 AH), an Ottoman census listed the village in the nahiya (sub-district) of Wadi al-Sha'ir.[12]
In 1882, the PEF's Survey of Western Palestine (SWP) described En Nakurah: "A small stone village on the slope of the hill. It has olives, which appear to grow half wild, and a spring
of good water, apparently perennial, in the valley to the north, near which are vegetable gardens. A small Mukam stands above the village, on the south."[13]
In the 1945 statisticsEn Naqura had a population of 350 Muslims[16] and a total of 5,507 dunams of land, according to an official land and population survey.[17] Of this, 591 dunams were plantations and irrigable land, 3,444 were used for cereals,[18] while 27 dunams were built-up land.[19]
The Jordanian census of 1961 found 487 inhabitants.[20]
Post-1967
Since the Six-Day War in 1967, An-Naqura has been held under Israeli occupation. A census recorded by the Israeli Civil Administration that same year recorded 610 persons, of whom 37 were refugees from Israel.[21]
^Government of Palestine, Department of Statistics, 1945, p. 19
^Government of Palestine, Department of Statistics. Village Statistics, April, 1945. Quoted in Hadawi, 1970, p. 60Archived 2018-09-06 at the Wayback Machine
^Government of Palestine, Department of Statistics. Village Statistics, April, 1945. Quoted in Hadawi, 1970, p. 107Archived 2013-10-05 at the Wayback Machine
^Government of Palestine, Department of Statistics. Village Statistics, April, 1945. Quoted in Hadawi, 1970, p. 157Archived 2013-10-05 at the Wayback Machine
^Government of Jordan, Department of Statistics, 1964, p. 26
^Grossman, D. (1986). "Oscillations in the Rural Settlement of Samaria and Judaea in the Ottoman Period". in Shomron studies. Dar, S., Safrai, S., (eds). Tel Aviv: Hakibbutz Hameuchad Publishing House. p. 352
Perlmann, Joel: The 1967 Census of the West Bank and Gaza Strip: A Digitized Version. Annandale-on-Hudson, N.Y.: Levy Economics Institute of Bard College. November 2011 – February 2012. [Digitized from: Israel Central Bureau of Statistics, Census of Population and Housing, 1967 Conducted in the Areas Administered by the IDF, Vols. 1–5 (1967–70), and Census of Population and Housing: East Jerusalem, Parts 1 and 2 (1968–70).]