Like the rest of the Hebron area, ash-Shuyukh is an agricultural area. Primary crops include olives, figs, almonds, lentils, peaches and apricots. Olive groves cover 980 dunams while grains and pulses cover 680 dunams. There are about 2,000 sheep and goats in the town raised as livestock.[3]
French explorer Victor Guérin visited in 1863, and noted that the village was situated on a high rocky hill. It had 200 inhabitants and a small mosque dedicated to a "Cheikh Ibrahim el-Hedmi."[5]
An Ottoman village list of about 1870 counted 33 houses and a population of 99 in Schijuch, though the population count included men only.[6][7]
In 1883, the PEF's Survey of Western Palestine described it as a "well-built village standing high, and visible from Tekua. There are a few trees round it, and caves. The water supply is from cisterns, and there is a spring to the north."[8]
The first school was established in 1940 by Mohammed Mahmoud Eid.[3]
In the 1945 statistics the population of Ash-Shuyukh was 1,240, all Muslims,[11] who owned 22,091 dunams of land according to an official land and population survey.[12] 1,713 dunams were plantations and irrigable land, 3,365 for cereals,[13] while 24 dunams were built-up (urban) land.[14]
^Government of Palestine, Department of Statistics, 1945, p. 23
^Government of Palestine, Department of Statistics. Village Statistics, April, 1945. Quoted in Hadawi, 1970, p. 50Archived 2011-06-04 at the Wayback Machine
^Government of Palestine, Department of Statistics. Village Statistics, April, 1945. Quoted in Hadawi, 1970, p. 94
^Government of Palestine, Department of Statistics. Village Statistics, April, 1945. Quoted in Hadawi, 1970, p. 144
^Government of Jordan, Department of Statistics, 1964, p. 23
^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. 368