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At the crossroads of traditional trade routes, Aleppo was an important economic center. The old town is a unique architectural mosaic from different times from the Hittites to the Ottomans. It is dominated by the medieval citadel. In ancient times, the center of the city was the Greek market square, on which the great Umayyad mosque has stood since 715. The large caravanserais date from the 15th to 17th centuries.

Aleppo Old City: Facts

Old city of Aleppo: history

In the twilight of the Levantine bazaar

Aleppo has many nicknames. It is called the “city of the seven gates”, “the gray one” or “the milked one”. The last name touches on the Islamic founding myth of the city. The citadel hill is said to be the old pasture of the ancestor Abraham, who also enjoys a high reputation in Islam and bears the honorary name of “friend of God” there. When he milked his flock, the people flocked for the milk that Abraham used to give away and shouted to each other: “Halaba ya la” – “Has it been milked yet?” Haleb «come. The name we are familiar with Aleppo is an Italian corruption of »Haleb« and probably comes from Venetian merchants of the 13th century.

Since prehistoric times, Haleb is attested as the residence of a kingdom called Yamkhad, which flourished for more than half a millennium. The Hellenistic re-establishment at the beginning of the 3rd century BC created a basic urban structure with the citadel hill as a royal castle and a regular street grid in the lower town, which can still be demonstrated today despite the overbuilding.

Located halfway between the most important Euphrates crossings and the Mediterranean Sea, Aleppo has been a center of the Middle Eastern trade since the beginning. Throughout the Middle Ages, the city, surrounded by strong walls, was the epitome of the commercial Levant. Aleppo controlled the profitable silk trade between Northern Iran and the Italian merchant towns and gained in importance as a commercial hub in the Turkish Empire with the Ottoman conquest of the Middle East. The European trading powers – whether Venice, France, England, the Netherlands or Russia – opened offices and consulates in the city.

Visible from afar and striking for the old town is the citadel enthroned on the castle hill. In the Hellenistic period it was the acropolis of the city, in the Islamic period it served as a refuge and residence. A tower-rich wall wreath rises above a smooth cone of rock paved with stones on the flanks. The only access to the height is an ascending arch bridge, which is taken up by a gate structure that kinks several times and is therefore easy to defend. Two mosques, one of which is dedicated to Abraham, and the ruins of a palace have been preserved on the plateau, as well as the throne room, which was built over the gateway at the beginning of the 15th century.

The view goes far from the citadel over the roofs of Aleppo. In the west you can see the religious center of the old town, the Umayyad mosque, which in its current form no longer belongs to the early Umayyad period of Islam, but to the Middle Ages. Located in the middle of the old town, it is surrounded by religious and secular buildings from the period between the 12th and 15th centuries, including the religious schools Halawiya, Moqadamiya and Adiliya as well as two hospitals, the Bimaristan Nuri and the Bimaristan Arghuni. In the trading city of Aleppo, the large warehouses of the Ottoman period clearly emerge from the maze of alleys, the Khan al-Wazir, the Khan as-Sabun and the Khan al-Gumruk. A single jewelry portal opens up the courtyard of these two-story caravanserais,

The souk spreads out between all these buildings, the covered shopping streets of the largest bazaar in the Orient and the “most oriental shopping arcade” of Syria – as dim as Romanesque naves. During the civil war of 2012, there was heavy fighting between rebels and government troops in Aleppo, and the old town was also badly affected. The world famous bazaar suffered severe fire damage.