[3] It is located at the foot of Mount Hermon, north of the Golan Heights, the classical Gaulanitis,[4] in the part occupied by Israel.

Archaeologists uncovered a shrine dedicated to Pan and related deities, and the remains of an ancient city dating from the Hellenistic and Roman periods.

[6] The spring at Banias initially originated in a large cave carved out of a sheer cliff face which was gradually lined with a series of shrines.

The temenos (sacred precinct) included in its final phase a temple placed at the mouth of the cave, courtyards for rituals, and niches for statues.

The once very large spring gushed from the limestone cave, but an earthquake moved it to the foot of the natural terrace where it now seeps quietly from the bedrock, with a greatly reduced flow.

[11] Paneas (Ancient Greek: Πανεάς,[12] Latin Fanium) was first settled in the Hellenistic period following Alexander the Great's conquest of the east.

On the death of Philip in 34 CE his kingdom was briefly incorporated into the province of Syria, with the city given the autonomy to administer its own revenues,[21] before reverting to his nephew, Herod Agrippa I.

In 635, Paneas gained favourable terms of surrender from the Muslim army of Khalid ibn al-Walid after it had defeated Heraclius' forces.

At the council of al-Jabiyah, when the administration of the new territory of the Umar Caliphate was established, Paneas remained the principal city of the district of al-Djawlan (the Djawlan) in the jund (military Province) of Dimashq (Damascus), due to its strategic military importance on the border with Jund al-Urdunn, which comprised the Galilee and territories east and north of it.

[31] The transfer of the Abbasid Caliphate capital from Damascus to Baghdad inaugurated the flowering of the Islamic Golden Age at the expense of the provinces.

At the end of the 9th century Al-Ya'qubi reaffirms that Paneas was still the capital of al-Djawlan in the jund of Dimshq, although by then the town was known as Madīnat al-Askat (city of the tribes) with its inhabitants being Qays, mostly of the Banu Murra with some Yamani families.

[35] Due to the Byzantine advances under Nicephorus Phocas and John Zimisces into the Abbasid empire, a wave of refugees fled south and augmented the population of Madīnat al-Askat.

[36] al-Nabulusi’s school of hadith was to survive in Banias under the tutelage of Arab scholars such as Abú Ishaq (Ibrahim b. Hatim) and al-Balluti.

[43] In late spring 1140, Mu'in ad-Din Unur handed Banias to the Crusaders during the reign of King Fulk, due to their assistance against Zengi's aggression towards Damascus.

[43] With the arrival of fresh troops to the Holy Land, King Baldwin III of Jerusalem broke the three-month-old truce of February 1157 by raiding the large flocks that the Turcoman people had pastured in the area.

In that year, Banias became the principal centre of Humphrey II of Toron's fiefdom, along with his being the constable of the Kingdom of Jerusalem, after it had first been granted to the Knights Hospitaller by Baldwin III.

[50][51] By the end of Saladin's life, Banias was in the territory of al-Afdal, Emir of Damascus, and in the Iqta' of Hussam al-Din Bishara.

[55] Later, Al-Mu'azzam Isa, son of al-Adil, started to dismantle fortifications across Palestine, in order to deny their protection should the Crusaders gain them, by fight or by land exchange.

Al-Sa'id Hasan of Banias, released by Hulegu during the Mongol invasion of Syria, allied with him, and took part in the Battle of Ain Jalut.

"[57] The traveller J. S. Buckingham described Banias in 1825: "The present town is small, and meanly built, having no place of worship in it; and the inhabitants, who are about 500 in number, are Mohammedans and Metouali, governed by a Moslem Sheikh.

[58] In the 1870s, Banias was described as "a village, built of stone, containing about 350 Moslems, situated on a raised table-land at the bottom of the hills of Mount Hermon.

In 1920 the French managed to assert authority over the Arab nationalist movement and after the Battle of Maysalun, King Faisal was deposed.

On 26 April, the Israeli cabinet met to consider the Syrian suggestions, with head of Israel's Water Planning Authority, Simha Blass, in attendance.

[68] Blass noted that while the land to be ceded to Syria was not suitable for cultivation, the Syrian map did not suit Israel's water development plan.

[68] In September 1953, Israel advanced plans for its National Water Carrier to help irrigate the coastal Sharon Plain and eventually the Negev desert by launching a diversion project on a nine-mile (14 km) channel midway between the Huleh Marshes and Sea of Galilee in the central DMZ to be rapidly constructed.

The Banias was included in the Jordan Valley Unified Water Plan, which allocated Syria 20 million cubic metres annually from it.

Instead, at the 2nd Arab summit conference in Cairo of January 1964 the League decided that Syria, Lebanon and Jordan would begin a water diversion project.

The canal would carry the Banias's fixed flow plus the overflow from the Hasbani (including water from the Sarid[clarification needed] and Wazani).

[72] After the local residents fled to Majdal Shams, the village was destroyed by Israeli bulldozers, leaving only the mosque, church and shrines.