[6] It is a significant site for post-biblical Jewish history, as it was the location of the Council of Jamnia, considered the birthplace of modern Rabbinic Judaism.

In classical antiquity, it was known as Jamnia (Koinē Greek: Ἰαμνία, romanized: Iamníā; Latin: Iamnia); to the Crusaders as Ibelin; and before 1948, as Yibna.

Salvage excavations carried out in 2001 by the Israel Antiquities Authority uncovered several burials at the northern foot of the original tell.

Upon her death, it passed to the Roman emperor Augustus, who managed it as a private imperial estate, a status it was to maintain for at least a century.

[10] After Salome's death, Iamnia came into the property of Livia, the future Roman empress, and then to her son Tiberius.

[12] According to rabbinic tradition, the tanna Yohanan ben Zakkai and his disciples were permitted to settle in Iamnia during the outbreak of the war, after Zakkai, realizing that Jerusalem was about to fall, sneaked out of the city and asked Vespasian, the commander of the besieging Roman forces, for the right to settle in Yavne and teach his disciples.

[18] The historian al-Baladhuri (d. 892 CE) mentioned Yibna as one of ten towns in Jund Filastin conquered by the Rashidun army led by Amr ibn al-As during the Muslim conquest of the Levant.

In August 1187, it was retaken by Saladin and burned down, and ceased for some time to form part of the Crusaders' kingdom.

[22] The Jewish traveler Benjamin of Tudela (1130–1173) identified Jamnia (Jabneh) of classical writers with the Ibelin of the Crusades.

[23] During the Mamluk period (13th–16th centuries), Yibna was a key site along the Cairo—Damascus road, which served as a center for rural religious and economic life.

After Israel's capture of Yibna in 1948, the shrine was taken over by Sephardic Jews who consider the tomb as the burial place of Rabbi Gamaliel of Yavne.

[28] An American missionary, William Thomson, who visited Yibna in 1834, described it as a village on hill inhabited by 3,000 Muslims who worked in agriculture.

[31] An Ottoman village list from 1870 found that Yibna had a population of 1,042 living in 348 houses, although this number only counted adult males.

[36] In 1941, Kibbutz Yavne was established nearby by refugees from Germany, followed by a Youth Aliyah village, Givat Washington, in 1946.

[43] Archaeological excavations have revealed that part of the pre-1948 Arab village at Yibna was built on top of a Byzantine-period cemetery and refuse pits.

[45] The harbour of ancient Yavneh has been identified on the coast at Minet Rubin (Arabic) or Yavne-Yam (Hebrew), where excavations have revealed fortification going back to the Bronze Age Hyksos.