The village is mentioned in a late 14th-century document of the Mamluk Sultanate, which ruled Palestine from Cairo, where three villagers are named as "al'ru'asā [lit.'the leaders'] in the village of Nūbā".[3]
Nuba, like the rest of Palestine, was incorporated into the Ottoman Empire in 1516, and in a tax register from 1596, the village was listed as part of the nahiya (sbdistrict) of Hebron in the Liwa of Jerusalem. It had a population of 82 Muslim households. The villagers paid a fixed tax rate of 25% on wheat, barley, vineyards and fruit trees, occasional revenues, goats and/or beehives; a total of 10,000 akçe.[4]
In 1838, the biblical scholar Edward Robinson noted Nuba as a Muslim village between the mountains and Gaza, and administratively attached to Hebron.[5] It was one of a cluster of villages at the foot of a mountain, together with Kharas and Beit Ula.[6] An Ottoman village list from c. 1870 showed that Nuba had 52 houses and a population of 200, though the population count only included men.[7][8] In 1883, PEF's Survey of Western Palestine described Nuba as a "small village perched on a low hill, with a well about a mile to the east."[9] In 1896 the population of Nuba was estimated to be about 537.[10]
In the 1922 census of Palestine conducted by the British Mandate authorities, Nuba' had a population 357, all Muslims.[11] This had increased at the time of the 1931 census to 611 Muslims, living in 140 houses.[12] In the 1945 statistics the population of Nuba was 760, all Muslims,[13] who owned 22,836 dunams of land according to an official land and population survey.[14] 403 dunams were plantations and irrigable land, 10,116 for cereals,[15] while 33 dunams were built-up (urban) land.[16]