It was built by Hasmonean ruler John Hyrcanus or his son Alexander Jannaeus in the 2nd or 1st century BCE[1] (in the Hellenistic part of the Second Temple period).

Initially destroyed by Gabinius,[2] the fortress was rebuilt and greatly expanded by King Herod (r. 37-4 BCE; Roman period).

[5] The Greek geographer Strabo also notes the destruction, along with that of Alexandrion and Machaerus, the "haunts of the robbers and the treasure-holds of the tyrants", at the direction of Gabinius's superior, the Roman general Pompey.

[7] The fortress was retaken, and extended;[8] it became notorious as a place where Herod imprisoned and killed his real or presumed enemies,[9][1] ultimately including his own son and heir Antipater,[10] who was buried there.

[2] In later times Saint Sabbas the Sanctified founded a residence (cenobium) for hermits on the site in 492 CE, called the Kastellion, part of the satellite community or lavra associated with the monastery at Mar Saba 4 km to the south-west.

[3] In a close by narrow, canyon-like wadi, a total of four rock-cut tunnels have been found between 2000 and 2006 by Oren Gutfeld of the Hebrew University, all cut into the cliff wall rising on one side of the valley floor.

[14] Two stepped tunnels were fully cleared of alluvial debris, but yielded only very few remains - in one of them, a Hasmonean-period clay pot[13][15][14] and the 1st-century BCE skeleton of a young woman with severe sword cuts, not placed in a tomb; and in the other, which splits into two, a small number of Iron Age II and Early Roman potsherds and Hasmonean coins, and the skeleton of a hyrax carbon-dated to 590 BCE.

[1] A large group of papyri, remnants of one or more monastic libraries of the 7th and 8th centuries AD, were excavated at the site in 1950 and now reside at the University of Leuven and the Rockefeller Museum.

Another discovery is a burial cave that most likely served as a necropolis for the monks of the Monastery of Kastellion during the Byzantine period and contains murals of 36 saints; a few of them were intentionally vandalized.