[2] Nearby localities include al-Sawda and to the west, Al-Annazah to the northwest, al-Qamsiyah to the north, Brummanet Raad to the northeast, al-Shaykh Badr to the east, Khirbet al-Faras to the south and Bimalkah to the southwest.

[2] In 985, under Muslim rule, the geographer al-Muqaddasi noted that Hisn al-Khawabi ('the Citadel of Khawabi') was part of Jund Hims (the military district of Homs).

[4] The Crusaders, who referred to the citadel as La Coible,[6][7] acquired Khawabi from its owner, Ibn Hamid, in 1111 and assigned its governorship to a local lord.

[2][4] However, author and expert in Isma'ili studies, Peter Willey, notes that there is no evidence the Crusaders ever held it, though they did refer to it as Coible and considered it an endangerment to their coastal mountain positions.

[11] Az-Zahir's relief army was dealt a major setback when the Muslim force was nearly destroyed in a Crusader ambush at Jabal Bahra, on the approaches of Khawabi.

[14] From that point on, although the Ismailis had continued to live in the area with limited autonomy under Mamluk rule,[15] the dismantled fortress was no longer used for military purposes.

[8] In 1484 the Mamluk sultan Qaytbay ended the tax on loom products, cattle slaughtering and shoe repairing for Khawabi and nearby al-Kahf.

By the early 20th century, towards the ends of Ottoman rule, the Sunni notables and aghas of Khawabi owned vast tracts of land inhabited by Alawite farming communities between Duraykish and Qadmus and the fortress village served as the nahiye headquarters.

[21] While Khawabi rapidly declined, al-Sawda became a dynamic regional center with a clinic, a secondary school and a wide range of shops.

Compounding their losses of land during the French Mandate, the notables of Khawabi lost the bulk of their remaining tracts through the agrarian reform laws of the 1950s and 1960s.

[21] As of 2000, public transport in the village consisted of two minibus line connections to Tartus, where some of the inhabitants worked in cement factories or as port dockers, with seldom few employed in the civil service.

Most of the working population was engaged in agriculture, either consisting of raising sheep and goats on the scrublands of the surrounding slopes or olive groves grown on small plots typically around ten dunams.

Khawabi remained relatively underdeveloped and characterized by illiteracy, high birth rates and early female marriage, compared to the surrounding Alawite communities.

The former occupies the upper area of the citadel and many of its historic characteristics, with the exception of its cellars and stables, virtually disappeared with the construction of new housing in the 1990s.

The visible parts of the wall in this section consist of thin reinforced concrete, typical of the architectural designs of the late Ottoman era.

Willey considered the remaining stone masonry of the outside walls to be "fine," disagreeing with Syrian architecture expert Ross Burns' generally unfavorable opinion of Khawabi's stonework.