A tomb on the flanks of the village, to the north side, contained Late Bronze II and IA I pieces.[3]
Remains from the Iron Age I (1200-1100 BCE) have been found here.[4]
The road leading to the village have revealed parts of a mosaic floor, which might have belonged to a shrine from the Byzantine era.[5]
Ottoman era
In 1838, in the Ottoman era, the village, called el Arak, was noted located in the Jurat Amra district, south of Nablus,[6] and was inhabited by Muslims.[7]
In 1870 Victor Guérin noted it located north-east of Tell, "perched like an eagle's nest on the summit of a very steep rocky hill."[8]
In 1882 the PEF's Survey of Western Palestine (SWP) noted that Arak "is named from the cliff on which it stands, on a spur of Gerizim; it is of moderate size and built of stone, with two springs beneath in the valley, one north, one south; olives are grown on the hill facing the village towards the north."[9]
In the 1945 statistics, Iraq Burin was counted with Burin, and together they had a population of 1,200, all Muslims,[12] with 19,096 dunams of land, according to an official land and population survey.[13] Of this, 1,797 dunams were plantations and irrigable land, 8,741 used for cereals,[14] while 106 dunams were built-up (urban) land.[15]
In 2009, the Israeli settlement of Har Brakha took control of 30 dunams of village land, west of the village, which formerly were used for grapes and almonds. In total, Israel has confiscated 291 dunams of land from Iraq Burin in order to construct Har Brakha, in addition to land taken from Burin and Kafr Qallil.[16]
In March, 2010, two brothers of the village, Mohammed and Osaid Qadus, 16 and 18 years old, were shot dead by Israeli soldiers, in an incident which the IDF said happened because the Israeli troops were "ill-prepared for missions."[17][18][19]
In January, 2011, 19 year old Oday Maher Hamza Qadous was shot dead by an Israeli settler from Har Brakha. The villagers said Qadous was farming in the village fields when he was shot, while the settlers said he was throwing stones.[20][21]
Bull, Robert J.; Edward F. Campbell (1968). "The Sixth Campaign at Balâṭah (Shechem)". Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research. 190 (190): 2–41. doi:10.2307/1356191. JSTOR1356191. S2CID222441522.
Miller II, Robert D. (2003). "A Gazetteer of Iron I Sites in the North-Central Highlands of Palestine". Annual of the American Schools of Oriental Research. 56: 143–218. ISBN0-89757-026-X.
