Anjar encompasses the ruins of a former Umayyad trading city. It was founded on a strategic location between Baalbek and Damascus. Umayyad Caliph Walid I started its construction in 714. The city was never completed, and destroyed and abandoned already in 744. The layout of Anjar was heavily influenced by Roman planning. Two meter thick walls contained the 114,000 square-meter city. It had forty towers and a gate. The city held over 600 shops, a Roman grid, a monumental tetrapyle, the Umayyad