Located between Fujairah City and Masafi, the village is the site of a significant stone and mudbrick fort – Bithnah Fort – and a little-known megalithic tomb that links the village to a 3,000-year-old trade route along Wadi Ham through the Hajar Mountains from the East Coast emirate of Fujairah through Masafi (itself part of Ras Al Khaimah) and Manama down to the desert town of Dhaid and then to Sharjah and the Persian Gulf.

Presided over by Prince Hans-Adam II of Liechtenstein, and directed in the field by Pierre Corboud, the SLFA team conducted several seasons of survey in the mountainous inland area of Fujairah, including the excavations at Bithnah, where a communal Wadi Suq era grave site was uncovered as well as a number of Iron Age finds.

[4] Bithnah was the site of a significant battle in 1745, according to the historian Ibn Ruzaiq,[5] between members of the Qawasim (Al Qasimi) and Na'im tribes and the Omani Imam and governor of Sohar, Ahmed bin Said.

The battle took place when the Qawasim together with the Na’im of Buraimi attempted to fight their way through the Wadi Ham to take the east coast and its great prize, the port of Sohar.

This was to mark a new era in the history of the area: the drawn-out battle between the Saidi Omanis against the Qawasim of Ras Al Khaimah and Sharjah, and other tribes of the West coast and interior.