The Ancient Silk Road Capital Rebuilding — Aleppo's UNESCO citadel rises from a 30-metre tell settled since the Bronze Age, the Great Mosque's minaret fell but the souqs it protected for 500 years are slowly reopening, and Aleppo soap made with laurel oil has been produced in the same family workshops since the 8th century
Aleppo (حلب, Halab) was the largest city in Syria and one of the most important trading cities in the ancient and medieval world — at the western end of the Silk Road, the final market city before merchants crossed the Syrian desert to the Mediterranean. The Old City (UNESCO World Heritage, 1986) was one of the most intact medieval Islamic urban environments in the world, with a 4.5 km² area of souqs, khans, hammams, and madrasas built continuously from the Mamluk period (13th century) through the Ottoman period. The Aleppo Citadel (القلعة) rises 50 metres above the surrounding plain on a 30-…
Aleppo's archaeology begins at the Ebla tablets (discovered 1974–75, 60 km south of Aleppo) — a Bronze Age archive of 17,000 clay tablets recording that Aleppo (then called Halab or Armi) was already the dominant city of the northern Levant in 2400 BCE. The Hittites and Egyptians fought the Battle of Kadesh (1274 BCE) partly over control of Aleppo's territory. The city passed through Assyrian, Persian, Macedonian (Alexander the Great), Seleucid, Roman, Byzantine, Arab Umayyad, Hamdanid, Fatimid, Crusader-adjacent, Ayyubid, Mongol, Mamluk, and Ottoman control — each layer depositing architectu…