The village stood on a plateau that stretched out in an east−west direction. A secondary road linked it to a highway that ran between Bayt Jibrin (an important village in the Hebron district) and the Jerusalem−Jaffa highway. A number of paths also connected it with the area's other villages. Sufla contained archaeological evidence of a Crusader presence. In the late nineteenth century, Sufla was situated on a narrow ridge and had a spring to the southeast.
The village was classified as a hamlet in the Mandate-era Palestine Index Gazetteer, and was rectangular in shape. Most of its houses were built of stone, and some of them had a cave-like design. When new houses were constructed, the village expanded along a road that led to the nearby village of Jarash. The people of Sufla were Muslims and maintained a shrine for a local shaykh (a Shaykh Mu'annis) on the western side of the village. They obtained water for domestic use from two springs in the southeast and northeast. Their lands were watered by rainfall, and were planted in grain, fruit trees, olive trees, and grapes; olive trees covered 24 dunums. In 1944/45 a total of 400 dunums was allocated to cereals. Parts of the village lands were used as grazing areas.