[3] Many ancient remains have been excavated at Kafr Yasif, including mosaic floors, Corinthian columns, and cisterns cut in rock.

[5] Furnaces used in the manufacture of glass; starting in the Byzantine (or possibly Roman) period and continuing into the Umayyad/Abbasid (fifth–seventh centuries CE) era have been found here.

[14] In 1193, Queen Isabella I and her spouse Henry II of Champagne granted the casale of Kafr Yasif to prior Heinrich of the Teutonic Knights.

The villagers paid a fixed tax-rate of 25% on various agricultural products, including wheat, barley, fruit trees, cotton, goats and beehives, winter pastures, jizya (poll tax), in addition to "occasional revenues"; a total of 12,877 akçe.

[20][21] In 1618 the Druze strongman and governor of Safed Fakhr al-Din Ma'n destroyed the home of the Shia Muslim notable Ahmad Quraytim in Kafr Yasif because Quraytim had fled to Fakhr al-Din's rival, the governor of Lajjun Sanjak, Ahmad Turabay.

[22] In the 1740s, ten Jewish households under the spiritual leadership of Rabbi Soloman Abadi settled in Kafr Yasif and were joined by a number of other Jews, leaving Safad in the early 1760s as a result of the 1759 earthquakes.

A church stood in the village, dated by Guèrin to c. 1740 and its iconostasis contained a number of icons provided by Russia.

[30] In the 1922 census of Palestine conducted by the British Mandate authorities, Kafr Yasif is listed with a population of 870 residents; 665 Christians, 172 Muslims and 33 Druze.

[31] On 1 December 1925, Kafr Yasif became one of the few Arab villages in the Galilee to receive local-council status during the British mandate period.

[3][35] According to a British chaplain, "The people at Kafr Yasif were very eager to point out that the troops who destroyed their houses were not English but Irish.

[41] The mayor, Yani Yani, leveraged his contacts with the Druze Ma'di family of neighboring Yirka, which maintained friendly ties with the Israelis, to sign a surrender agreement mediated by the Israeli officer Haim Orbach on 10 July preventing the expulsion of the village's residents.

[42] Unlike in many other captured Arab towns, the majority of the population remained, and about 700 inhabitants of nearby villages, especially al-Birwa, al-Manshiyya, and Kuwaykat, took refuge there.

[50] In 1972–1973, Violet Khoury was elected mayor of Kafr Yasif, making her the first Arab woman to head a local council in Israel.

When the Druze leadership in the Department of Minority Affairs gained knowledge of the congress's planned meeting and failed to persuade Faraj to postpone it, the spiritual head of the Druze community, Sheikh Amin Tarif locked the gates of the al-Khadr shrine, where the meeting was to be held.

The congress was instead held in a nearby house in the town and one of the clauses of the summit expressed Druze solidarity with the other Arab communities of Israel.

Hundreds of Druze youths from Julis subsequently entered Kafr Yasif, prompting the mayor to call for emergency back-up from the regional police, a request which was denied.

The structure is composed of a large convention hall adjacent to the tomb, along with rooms and courtyards that serve both pilgrims and other visitors.

[64] Its schools, proximity and location between major cities and other Arab villages, the relatively equal distribution of land ownership among its households and the diversity brought about by the influx of internally displaced Palestinians all contributed to its local importance.

[64] Several students, including Mahmoud Darwish, became well-known poets, and the village hosted weekly poetry recitals.