It is bordered by 'Einabus and Huwwara to the east, Yasuf, Iskaka and Marda to the south, Zeita Jamma'in to the west, 'Asira al Qibliya and 'Urif to the north.

The village was home to the Bani Qudama clan, who moved to Damascus in 1156, during Crusader rule in Palestine.

"[5][10] Diya al-Din (1173-1245) refers to the presence of Muslims in Jamma'in during his lifetime, and he also noted that the village had a mosque.

Jamma'in 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, part of Nablus Sanjak.

[12] In the 17th century, the Qasim family ruled Jamma'in and twenty nearby villages, including Awarta, Beit Wazan, Haris and Zeita.

Jamma'in was the seat of the namesake Jamma'in subdistrict of the District of Nablus.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.”[13] In 1834, when the Egyptians under Ibrahim Pasha ruled Palestine, Ottoman-aligned Arab families in Palestine revolted under the leadership of Qasim al-Ahmad.

[18] In 1870/1871 (1288 AH), an Ottoman census listed the village with a population of 150 households in the nahiya (sub-district) of Jamma'in al-Awwal, subordinate to Nablus.

[19] In 1882, the PEF's Survey of Western Palestine (SWP) described Jamma'in as "the largest village in the district, on high ground, surrounded with olive groves.

Like many other Palestinian localities in the West Bank, Jamma'in's residents have been involved in the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, and have been a target of several raids by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF).

[citation needed] In January 2015 Israel forces set up an iron gate at the southern entrance to the village, its main exit point, blocking transit between Jamma'in and Marda.

Basket-weaving is not a major economic sector, but along with Zeita and az-Zawiya, Jamma'in is well known for producing baskets made from olive wood fronds.