It is bordered by Talfit and Qaryut to the east, Al-Lubban ash-Sharqiya to the south, Iskaka and Al Lubban ash Sharqiya to the west, and Yatma, Qabalan and Yasuf to the north.

[5] As-Sawiya was incorporated into the Ottoman Empire in 1517 with all of Palestine, and in 1596 it appeared in the tax registers as being in the Nahiya of Jabal Qubal of the Liwa of Nablus.

They paid a fixed tax-rate of 33.3% on agricultural products, including wheat, barley, summer crops, olive trees, occasional revenues, goats and beehives; a total of 8,610 akçe.

Situated between Dayr Ghassāna in the south and the present Route 5 in the north, and between Majdal Yābā in the west and Jammā‘īn, Mardā and Kifl Ḥāris in the east, this area served, according to historian Roy Marom, "as a buffer zone between the political-economic-social units of the Jerusalem and the Nablus regions.

On the political level, it suffered from instability due to the migration of the Bedouin tribes and the constant competition among local clans for the right to collect taxes on behalf of the Ottoman authorities.

"[10] In 1838 Robinson noted As-Sawiya being situated on a hill,[11] located in the Jurat Merda district, south of Nablus.

[27] In the 1882 the PEF's Survey of Western Palestine (SWP) described it as "a small square building, also a ruined Khan; the walls are standing to some height, and drafted stones are used at the corners.

"[28] Khirbet Berkit has been described by Charles William Wilson (1836–1905) as likely being identical with first-century CE Borceos, and a nearby ruin called ’Aina with Anuath; Anuath and Borceos are the border town or towns mentioned by Josephus as standing at the border between Samaria and Judea.

[29] Near the spring by the khan, Wilson describes a large oak-tree, ballut in Arabic, of a size very seldom found in what he terms as Southern Palestine.