The name itself may conserve the toponym of Beera mentioned in the Book of Judges 9:21. In the 12th and 13th centuries, during the Crusader era, Burin was inhabited by Muslims, according to Ḍiyāʼ al-Dīn. The founder of the Banu Ghawanima family was born in the village in 1166. In 1176, a part of the tithes from the village was pledged to the Church of Mt. Zion, but there is no evidence that it was ever collected.
Ottoman era
Burin 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 Sanjak of Nablus. It had a population of 120 households and 5 bachelors, all Muslim. They paid a fixed tax rate of 33.3% on a number of crops, including wheat, barley, summer crops, olives, and goats or beehives, and a press for olives or grapes; a total of 26,445 akçe. In 1838, it was noted as Baurin, located in Jurat Amra, south of Nablus. Robinson further noted that it was "a large village, or rather a market town." In 1882, the PEF's Survey of Western Palestine described Burin as a "large village in a valley, with a spring in the middle and a few olives."
In the 1922 census of Palestine conducted by the British Mandate authorities, Burin had a population of 901, all Muslims, while in the 1931 census it had 215 houses and a population of 859 Muslims. In the 1945 statistics, Burin had a population of 1,200, all Muslims, with 19,096 dunams of land, according to an official land and population survey. Of this, 1,797 dunams were plantations and irrigable land, 8,741 used for cereals, while 106 dunams were built-up land.
Since the Six-Day War in 1967, Burin has been under Israeli occupation. After the 1995 accords, 20% of the village land was classified as Area B, the remaining 80% as Area C. Israel has confiscated land from Burin in order to construct 2 Israeli settlements: 621 dunams for Bracha, and 233 dunams for Yizhar.
The land and water resources of Burin has gradually been reduced since the 1967 Israeli occupation, due to the expropriation for Israeli settlements and military bases. Since 1982, more than 2,000 dunams of Burins land was first declared "state land" and then handed over to the settlers of Har Brakha. In 2008, a yeshiva student from Yitzhar was arrested after a failed rocket attack on Burin. After Israeli police demolished a trailer home in Adei Ad, a group of settlers from Yitzhar vandalized cars, smashed windows and cut electricity wires in Burin. From mid-June 2008 to August 2008 the human rights groupYesh Din documented nine attacks on Palestinian families living in Burin allegedly carried out by settlers living in outposts near Yitzhar or Har Brakha. Cases of "disturbances of the peace", a term referring to harm caused to Palestinians and their property, as well as harm to Israeli security forces, by Israeli citizens, rose in 2008, with 429 incidents in the first half of 2008, compared with 587 incidents in all of 2006 and 551 in 2007. In February 2010, an 18-year-old Burin resident was shot and wounded by a settler security guard, which the settlers said took place after Palestinians threw stones at them. There has been several attacks from Israeli settlers on olive trees in Burin. Olive harvest days are coordinated with Israel, the Palestinian Authority and large clans in the area to prevent violence and vandalism. 7,714 Palestinian-owned trees were damaged during the first months of 2013. According to a report by Yesh Din, Burin had lost the most trees. A spokesman for the Israeli governing body in the West Bank said that were also cases where Palestinians has damaged trees owned by Israel, but they were fewer.
