Crusader period

In the early 13th century, the geographer Yaqut al-Hamawi described Sârûniyyah as "a pass near Tabariyya, you go up it to reach At Tûr".^[3]

Ottoman era

Incorporated into the Ottoman Empire in 1517 with all of Palestine, Sharona appeared under the name of Saruniyya in the 1596 tax registers as being in the nahiya (subdistrict) of Tabariyya under the Liwa of Safad. It had an entirely Muslim population consisting of 17 households. They paid taxes on wheat, barley, occasional revenues, goats and beehives; a total of 3592 Akçe.^[4][5]

A map from Napoleon's invasion of 1799 by Pierre Jacotin showed the place, though unnamed.^[6]

In 1875, Victor Guérin visited Sarona and noted:

"This village is divided into two quarters; the houses are rudely built on two hillocks rising round a valley. This is watered from a spring enclosed in a sort of small square chamber, the floor of which is formed of large slabs, and which has a vaulted vestibule built of regular stones."^[7]

In 1881, the Palestine Exploration Fund's Survey of Western Palestine noted "basaltic stone houses, containing about 250 Moslems, situated in arable plain, without trees."^[8]

According to Avneri, Sarona was settled by Circassian refugees from the Caucasus in 1878, but by 1910 they had moved elsewhere and had been replaced by Arabs.^[9] The land was purchased from the Arabs by the Jewish Colonization Association in 1910.^[9]

In 1913, a Jewish settlement called Rama, but also called Sarona, was established close to the Arab village by ahuza (estate) members from Chicago.^[10] The impact of World War I, poor conditions, and the lack of sufficient manpower kept the new settlement impoverished and debt-ridden.^[10]

British Mandate era

In the 1922 census of Palestine, conducted by the British Mandate authorities, the new and old settlements together contained 92 inhabitants; 77 Muslims and 15 Jews.^[11] In the summer at the end of 1923, additional Jewish settlers, Brisk kevutzah from Kfar Yehezkel, arrived with help from the Jewish National Fund, but by the end of 1928 the settlement had been abandoned and the land returned to the Palestine Jewish Colonization Association, the heir to the Jewish Colonization Association.^[10] Half the land was leased to Arab tenants.^[12] At the time of the 1931 census the population of Sarona was 114, all Muslims, in a total of 23 houses.^[13] The nearby Arab village of Kafr Sabt, prior to the outbreak of hostilities in the 1948 Arab Israeli War, had a population of 900 Arabs.^[14]

Moshav

Sharona 1947, Mount Tabor in distance

In 1938, a moshav was established by members of the Gordonia organization,^[10] with the cost borne by the Palestine Jewish Colonization Association and the Agricultural Workers Federation.^[12]

In the 1945 statistics, the population was recorded as 110 Jews and no Arabs.^[15]