They paid a fixed tax-rate of 25% on agricultural products, including wheat, barley, olives, fruits, and cotton.

Taxes were also paid on goats, beehives, orchards, and a press that was used either for processing olives or grapes; a total of 16,250 Akçe.

[9] Traveling in Palestine under the alias Sheikh Ibrahim Ibn 'Abd Allah,[10] the Swiss scholar Johann Ludwig Burckhardt passed through the area around 1812 and said that the plain around the village was covered with wild artichoke,[11][12] while William McClure Thomson said that al-Shajara (Sejera) was one of several villages in the area which was surrounded by gigantic hedges of cactus.

[14] Victor Guérin visited in 1875, and discovered the ruins of a rectangular edifice built of cut stones, and oriented from west to east.

[18] In the 1922 census of Palestine conducted by the British Mandate authorities, the population of Sjajara was 543 residents; 391 Muslims, 100 Jews, and 52 Christians.

[25] During the 1948 War, the Arab Liberation Army defending al-Shajara battled Israeli forces in the village in early March.

[26] It was captured by Israel on May 6, 1948, by the 12th Battalion, Golani Brigade — the entire population fled leaving twenty dead.

The Palestinian historian Walid Khalidi described the place in 1992: The ruins of houses and broken steel bars protrude from beds of wild vegetation.