Located on a hill overlooking the plains of Acre, both of these old villages were built around a tomb for a sheikh, and share a similar history.

Burial chambers dated to the Intermediate Bronze Age were discovered in the north of the modern day village, at the end of a shaft leading from a man-made cave carved into the northern slope of the chalk hill upon which Sheikh Dawud is situated.

[5] Khirbet Buda, another ancient site identified at the southeast corner of the modern village, contains remains from the Roman or Byzantine period.

[11] In 1881, the PEF's Survey of Western Palestine (SWP) writes of Shaykh Danun that it was a "small village, built of stone and mud, contains about 50 Muslims, on the edge of a plain, with stream of water near.

[13] At the time of the 1922 census of Palestine conducted by the British Mandate, Shaikh Danun had a population of 106, while Sheikh Daud had 193 people, all Muslims.

[19] According to Dawud Bader, Sheikh Danun has later received many new inhabitants, including internally displaced persons from the depopulated Arab villages of al-Ghabisiyya, Amqa, Kuwaykat, al-Nahr and Umm al-Faraj.

[20] A report by the Palestine Antiquities Department (1931) on Shaykh Danun found that the village contained a built Maqam (shrine), with a few houses and rock-cuttings located nearby.

[3] Andrew Petersen, an archaeologist specializing in Islamic architecture, visited the Maqam Shaykh Danun in 1991, and notes that though it is hidden amongst houses, it is visible because of its tall white dome.