From several points I took pictures of the fortress on a nearby hill. The Bradt Guide has it that at the lower edge of some of its walls the old Hellenistic remains are visible of what once was the acropolis (High City) of the town. It was destroyed in 64 BC by the Roman general Pompey (Bombeh in Arabic), what you see now is mainly the fortress built by the Zengid leader Nur Ad-Din in the 12th century. Crusaders occupied it before in 1106, but made no changes. Apart from all these old remains there are also the houses of the poorer part of the population of the modern town, Qual’at Al-Mudiq.