Yaqut al-Hamawi (d. 1229) wrote that it was "a village of the Nablus District in Filastin. The Jews say that it was here that Nimrud (Nimrod) ibn Ka´an threw Abraham into the fire; the learned, however, say this took place at Babil (Babylon), in Irak -and Allah alone knows the truth. There is here the spring called Ain al Khidr. Yusuf (Joseph) as Sadik -peace be on him! - was buried here, and his tomb is well known, lying under the tree". The church built around Jacob's Well and the lands of the village of Balata belonged to the Benedictine nuns of Bethany in the 12th century. Written documentation from this time of the Crusades indicates that, Balata, also known as "Balathas", was a Frankish settlement. Balata al-Balad, like the rest of Palestine, was incorporated into the Ottoman Empire in 1517, and in the census of 1596 the village appeared under the name "Balata" as being in the "Nahiya" (Subdistrict) of "Jabal Qubal", part of Nablus Sanjak. It had a population of 34 households, all Muslim. They paid a fixed tax-rate of 33.3% on agricultural products, including wheat, barley, summer crops, olive trees, goats and beehives, in addition to occasional revenues; a total of 5,200 akçe. In 1870, Victor Guérin found here a small village, with about twenty houses. It had abundant waters, which were distributed to the fields in a canal, with "beautiful antique tiles". In 1882, the Palestine Exploration Fund's "Survey of Western Palestine" described Balata as a small hamlet in the valley, of low howels, near a beautiful spring. On the east were figs and mulberries. A 1900 report by Conrad Schick for the Palestine Exploration Fund describes Balata as a hamlet made up of a few huts surrounded by gardens that lay to the west of Jacob's Well and its accompanying church complex, at that time in ruins. In the 1922 census of Palestine conducted by the British Mandate authorities, Balata had a population of 461; all Muslim, increasing in the 1931 census to 574; 6 Christians and 568 Muslims, in a total of 114 houses. In the 1945 statistics, Balata had a population of 770 Muslims, with a total of 3,000 dunams of land, living in a built-up area of 25 dunams.