Nearby localities include Kafrun to the west, al-Malloua and al-Bariqiyah to the southwest, Habnamrah and Marmarita to the south, Hadiya to the southeast, Kafr Ram to the east, Ayn Halaqim to the northeast, Ayn al-Shams to the north and Duraykish to the northwest.

It is the administrative center of the Mashta al-Helu nahiya (subdistrict) of the Safita District which contained 19 localities with a collective population of 12,577 in 2004.

Schools were opened by American, European and Russian missions in the late 19th century and silk mill was built in 1855, one of the few industrial facilities in the coastal region into the 1960s.

Since the 1980s, Mashta al-Helu has become a major summer resort town in the area and derives most of its income from tourism.

[5] The area where the village was established was then known as Mashta Troush Hasan for the landowner of nearby Uyun al-Wadi, Hasan Agha al-Turkmani, who camped his livestock at Mashta for the winter and sheltered Elias in his home at Uyun al-Wadi.

Elias became known as 'al-Aji' because he was an orphan and initially lived alone in the village site and his descendants took on this epithet as the family name.

[11] Before the Ba'ath Party gained power in Syria in the 1960s, Mashta al-Helu was one of a few villages in the coastal mountain region that was electrified and connected to a grid,[12] and one of the few with resident doctors.

[19] In 1962, the Catholic newspaper The Criterion reported the village had 200 impoverished parishioners, many of whom were unemployed, and in need of funds to repair the church of Beit Sarkis.