Al-Haffah is surrounded by mountains and located 7 kilometers (4.3 mi) west of the Sahyun Castle (or Citadel of Salah al-Din), a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Although al-Haffah has been attested since the medieval period, it lacks archaeological remains, as building activity in its immediate vicinity from as early as Byzantine rule was concentrated in the formidable Sahyun Castle, which is located on a more defensible site.

[5] The local geographer Yaqut al-Hamawi mentioned al-Haffah in the early 13th century, during Ayyubid rule, noting that it was a district to the west of Aleppo comprising many villages and the producer of a fabric called Haffiyyah.

[6] The Sunni Muslim inhabitants of the Sahyun area generally descend from the Turkmen and Kurdish tribesmen settled in the mountain forts by the Mamluk sultan Baybars and his successors to better control the road between Aleppo and the coastal plain.

Further, it hosted the chief souk (market) of its mountainous district and its elites drew in the land rents of the surrounding countryside and dominated its trade network.

[11] The Agrarian Reform Laws of the 1960s diminished the rent incomes of the town's landowning notables, the bulk of whom eventually relocated to Latakia, especially its Saliba neighborhood, or Damascus, though often keeping their homes in al-Haffah as summerhouses.

[12] Al-Haffah's commercial influence is presently limited to the mostly Sunni Muslim villages in its immediate vicinity, and it is economically dependent on the city of Latakia, with which it has more socioeconomic ties than with the localities in its district.