Uqayribat is identified as the site of the Roman-era town of Occaraba, listed on the Peutinger Table.[3] In the Notitia Dignitatum, a Roman document, Occaraba is mentioned as a garrison of the equites promoti Illyriciani legion.[4] The Czech explorer Alois Musil did not locate any Roman remains in the village during his early 20th-century expedition in the region.[4]
According to the 9th-century Persian geographer, Ibn Khordazbeh, during the Abbasid era, Uqayribat was one of the administrative subdistricts of Homs, along with al-Qastal, Salamiyah and Zumayn, all of which were part of the larger district of Jund Hims.[4] It remained an administrative subdistrict of Homs by the 13th century as well.[4]
In 1900, the modern-day village of Uqayribat was founded by a group of farmers who migrated 100 kilometers northwest from their hometown of Palmyra to cultivate and settle the place.[5] The settlement was built on a small elevation.[4] The Ottomans, who ruled Syria between 1517 and 1917, established a gendarme post at the new settlement.[5] Uqayribat soon after became the center of the surrounding region, which too was developing agriculturally and which was increasingly settled by formerly nomadic Bedouin tribesmen throughout the early 20th century.[5] In 1908, Musil noted that the village and its agriculturally productive vicinity belonged to the Arab sheikh of Palmyra.[4]
During the Syrian Civil War, ISIS captured the town from the Syrian Armed Forces in 2014. On 3 September 2017 the town was regained by the Syrian Arab Army. However, on 9 September 2017, the army lost large parts of the town.[6] On 15 September 2017, the Syrian army recaptured the town Uqayribat after the huge counter-attack and the heavy air raids of the Russian aircraft and helicopters.[7] Many civilian casualties occurred.[8]
In 2018, a large mosaic was discovered in Uqayribat which belongs to an early Byzantine church.[9]