[2] In the Early Bronze IV, the Akkar Plain had three major sites in Tell Arqa, Tell Kazel, and Tell Jamous.

[4] The cultural focus had been towards the south and southern Levant, but now changed with more influence from Inner Syria and the use of copper.

[5] Arqa has the distinction of being a city-state that wrote one of the 382 Amarna letters to the Pharaoh of Ancient Egypt.

During Rib-Hadda's lengthy opposition to the Habiru, even the city-state of Irqata and its elders, wrote to the Egyptian Pharaoh Akhenaten for assistance.

When the Romans gained control over this part of western Asia, they entrusted Arca as a client tetrarchy or vassal principality to a certain Sohaimos, who died in AD 48 or 49.

[11] At the time of the First Crusade, Arca became an important strategic point of control over the roads from Tripoli to Tartus and Homs.

When Tripoli itself fell in 1289 to the army of Sultan Qalawun and was razed to the ground, Arca lost its strategic importance and thereafter is mentioned only in ecclesiastical chronicles.

[12] In 1838, Eli Smith noted the village, whose inhabitants were Greek Orthodox, located west of esh-Sheikh Mohammed.