Beirut: The ancient city of Aleppo has been at the crossroads of history for as far as history can remember; sieged, looted, and torched by various conquerors and empires.
Every single time in its long history, the city survived and re-emerged, often stronger than before.
The current disaster that has befallen Aleppo is not new to the city. A cholera epidemic killed thousands of Aleppines in 1823, followed by the plague in 1827, which eliminated 20-25 per cent of the city’s population. When the Muslim Army of Khaled Ibn al-Walid invaded Syria, Aleppo was encircled and besieged from August to October 637.
King Baldwin II of Jerusalem also laid siege to Aleppo in 1124 and a third siege took place in January 1260, this time by the Mongol ruler Hulagu Khan.
It lasted for six unbearable days; Aleppo was shelled by catapults and overran by Mongol, Armenian, and Frankish warriors.
The citadel held out until late February and was demolished following its capitulation. Holagu Khan massacred the civilian population of Aleppo, killing all men, arresting women and children and selling them into slavery. He also destroyed and burnt the Great Mosque of Aleppo.
In 1400, the city was yet again besieged and destroyed, this time by Tamerlane, the powerful Mongol commander from Central Asia.
A civil defence worker carries a child from a collapsed building after an air strike on the rebel-held Sakhur, Aleppo. AFP
He massacred the city’s inhabitants and built a tower of 20,000 skulls outside the city walls before marching on Damascus. In 1850, Aleppo collapsed into turmoil, yet again, this time when Muslim rioters massacred the city’s Christians, temporarily creating a power vacuum that was filled by local militias.
The Ottomans responded with force, retaking the city by force.
The first mention of Aleppo was found in cuneiform tablets from ancient Iraq, dating back to the 6th millennium BC. Located at one end of the Silk Road it was a must-stop for traders across time until the Suez Canal was inaugurated in 1869, where sea routes quickly replaced ground caravans, prompting Aleppines to switch to an industry-based economy.
Aleppo fell under Ottoman rule in 1516. Thanks to its strategic geographic location on the trade route between Anatolia and the east, Aleppo rose to high prominence in the Ottoman era, surpassing Damascus as the principle market for goods coming to the Mediterranean from the Far East.
The Levant Company of London, a joint-trading company charged with handling England’s trade with the Ottoman Empire, was headquartered in Aleppo until the late 18th century. Venice opened a consulate in Aleppo in 1548, rather than Damascus, and so did France in 1562, followed by England in 1583 and the Netherlands in 1613. Its commercial status made it a city gushing with gold. So famous was Aleppo that it is mentioned twice by William Shakespeare, in his two classics, Othello (1604) and Macbeth (1611).
When the Ottoman Empire collapsed at the end of the First World War, Aleppo became part of the modern-state of Syria.
Its notables helped author Syria’s first constitution and one of them, Ebrahim Hananu, led an armed uprising against the invading French troops, which had landed on the Syrian coast in 1918. His insurgency, now known as the Aleppo Revolt, created the cornerstone for nationalism and chivalry for children growing up in the 1920s.
When the French took full control of Syria after crushing the Aleppo Revolt they carved the city into city-states, giving limited autonomy to Aleppo in September 1920. The State of Aleppo included the Sanjak of Alexanderetta, a narrow coastal plain backed by a chain of mountains on the lower valley of the Orontes River, and reached as far as the Euphrates River and the fertile city of Deir Al Zor.
The Sanjak’s main city was Antioch, a prosperous metropolis that Turkey eventually annexed in 1939. The population of the Aleppo State was mostly Arab but it included Kurds in the eastern region and plenty of Christians in the city itself. Aleppo Christians were rich and prominent, belonging to different congregations in the Orient.
The state of Aleppo was slightly more populated than Damascus, with 604,000 inhabitants in 1920 (excluding the nomadic tribes in the eastern region).
In the breakdown, 83.1 per cent were Sunni Muslims (502,000), five per cent were Alawites (30,000), 8.6 per cent were Christians (52,000), 1.2 per cent were Jews (7,000) and 0.5 per cent were foreigners (3,000). The flag of the new state was fixed in white with three yellow stars in the middle, and a mini-French flag in the upper left hand corner.
By separating Aleppo from Damascus, the French wanted to capitalise on a traditional state of competition between the two cities and turn it into political division.
Briefly for 18 months they created a federal government for Syria, with Aleppo — rather than Damascus — as its capital.
The state of Aleppo contained most of Syria’s fertile land, including the basin of the Euphrates. It also had direct access to the sea via Alexanderetta, unlike Damascus, which had access to neither.
The French hoped that by giving Aleppo most of Syria’s agricultural and mineral wealth it would never want to re-untie with Damascus. The two states were only merged into one in January 1925, with Damascus as its capital once again. In 1927-1946, prominent Aleppo notables led the political battles against the French, notably Saad Allah Al Jabiri, the celebrated statesman who assumed the Syrian premiership in 1943, then became speaker of parliament.
A good friend of King Farouk, he was one of the founders of the Arab League in 1944.
When independence was achieved in 1946, Aleppo leaders created a political party aimed at breaking the hegemony of Damascus over Syrian politics.
The People’s Party, as it was called, was headed by Rushdi Al Kikhiya, a landed notable, and Nazem Al Qudsi, a Geneva-trained lawyer who had previously served as Syria’s first ambassador to the US.
The two men were overwhelmingly in favour of uniting Syria with Hashemite Iraq and in 1949 their party won a landslide victory in parliamentary elections. Qudsi became prime minister and Kikhiya speaker of Parliament. They packed the cabinet with Aleppine ministers and signed an agreement with King Faisal II, calling for a federal union between Damascus and Baghdad.
The capital would rotate between both cities and a Hashemite king would run Syria, aided by a Syrian prime minister. The idea was aborted by a series of coups that rocked the young republic in 1949-1958. In the mid-1950s, the leaders of Aleppo voiced their support for the Baghdad Pact, a US-backed treaty aimed at limiting communist influence in the Arab World.
In 1961, Qudsi was elected president of Syria — the first Aleppine to assume the job — replacing Jamal Abdul Nasser after collapse of the short-lived Syrian-Egyptian Union.
The People’s Party like all of Aleppo was vehemently opposed to union with Egypt, preferring unity instead with neighbouring Iraq. Nasser never forgave their opposition to his rule, nationalising the city’s notables and confiscating the lands of its landowners.
His successor, Nazem Al Qudsi, tried to revoke the Egyptian leader’s socialist measures, but time was too short. He too was toppled by military coup in March 1963, staged by a coalition of Baathists and Nasserists.
Although the first Baathist head of state was also from Aleppo, he did little to advance the interests of his city and from hereon, Aleppo was neglected for years to come.
During the thirty-year rule of President Hafez Al Assad he never once visited Aleppo, furious with the city for closing down in solidarity with a strike against his rule, orchestrated by the Muslim Brotherhood.
In 1979, the Brotherhood orchestrated a massacre of Alawite cadets at the Aleppo Artillery School.
Militant cells were busted in Aleppo, and the Brotherhood brought the markets of Aleppo into strike in early March 1980.
The Syrian Army entered the city in April, with tanks and armoured vehicles, clamping down on Brotherhood activity in Aleppo.
The city only rose to prominence once again during the era of Bashar Al Assad, who oversaw reconstruction of its historical treasures and became a frequent guest of Aleppo after it was named “Capital of Islamic Culture” by Unesco in 2006. He last visited Aleppo in January 2011, touring its great citadel with his friend-turned nemesis, Shaikh Hamad Bin Khalifa Al Thani of Qatar.
Aleppo is the largest city in Syria and the third largest in the region after Cairo and Istanbul.
