In Phoenician times, it was an important seaport, known to the Greeks as Balemia. Perhaps in Hellenistic times the city borrowed the name Leucas (according to Stephanus Byzantius) from the island in western Greece. The city of Balanaea, its Latin name, was a colony of Aradus (Strabo, XVI, 753), and was placed by Stephanus Byzantius in Phoenicia, though it belonged rather to the former Roman province of Syria. Its first known bishop was present at the Council of Nicaea in 325 (Lequien, Oriens Christ., II, 923). In 2011, during the 2011 Syrian uprising, Baniyas is assieged by the Syrian military
