Aleppo

Aleppo appears in cuneiform texts of the third millennium BC as Halab, and the mound beneath its citadel held a temple of the storm god Hadad rebuilt over centuries. In the Middle Bronze Age the city was the capital of the Amorite kingdom of Yamhad before passing in turn to Hittites, Assyrians, Persians and the Seleucids, who laid out a Greek city grid still traceable in the street plan and called the place Beroea.

The 10th century made Aleppo a capital again under the Hamdanid emir Sayf al-Dawla. The city held out against Crusader attacks, was strengthened by Saladin's son al-Zahir Ghazi, who rebuilt the citadel much as it stands. Under the Ottomans from 1516 it became the third city of the empire and the great entrepôt between Persia, India and Europe, with English, French and Venetian merchants in its khans. The opening of the Suez Canal and the drawing of the Turkish border in the 1920s cut those trade routes; Armenian survivors of the 1915 deportations settled in large numbers and reshaped whole quarters.

Industry — textiles, food processing, pharmaceuticals — made Aleppo Syria's largest and richest city by the late 20th century. From 2012 the city was divided by a front line, and the eastern half and much of the old city were destroyed by the fighting that ended in 2016; the souks burned in 2012 and the Great Mosque's minaret fell in 2013. Restoration of parts of the citadel, the souks and the churches has continued in stages, and the city changed hands again in late 2024.

Aleppines regard their city as Syria's cultural capital and Damascus as its political one, a rivalry that is old, real and generally good-humoured. The Aleppo dialect is recognised instantly anywhere in the country, and so is the city's reputation for trade: a merchant's patience, long bargaining and a memory for families and debts.

Music is the deepest of the city's traditions. Aleppo is the home of tarab, the absorbed rapture of classical Arabic singing, of the qudud halabiya, songs with religious melodies and secular words, and of the muwashshah form inherited from Andalusia. The singer Sabah Fakhri, born in the city, carried the repertoire to audiences across the Arab world, and Sufi lodges kept up chanting and dhikr in the old quarters. Aleppo also produced many of Syria's best-known composers and oud players.

The city was one of the most religiously varied in the Middle East: a Sunni Arab majority alongside Kurds, Turkmen and one of the region's largest concentrations of Armenian, Syriac, Greek Orthodox and Catholic Christians, settled around Jdeydeh with their own schools, churches and clubs. Many of those families left during the war. Craft traditions hold on — Aleppo soap, boiled from olive oil and laurel-berry oil and stacked to age for months, gold and silver work, silk and cotton weaving — and the kitchen is treated as an art in itself, the one subject on which almost every Aleppine claims authority.

Aleppo was Syria's largest city before 2011, with roughly two million people; the war emptied whole districts, many residents left for Turkey, Europe or other parts of Syria, and returns since 2024 have been steady but uneven, so any current figure is uncertain. The population is overwhelmingly Arab, with long-established Kurdish and Armenian communities and villagers who came in from the surrounding plains.

The economy was built on manufacturing — textiles and clothing, soap, food processing, pharmaceuticals — and on trade with Turkey and the Gulf. A great deal of that capacity was destroyed or dismantled, and workshops have restarted at a smaller scale in the industrial zones and the old artisan quarters. Electricity has been scarce for years, so generators, rooftop solar panels and water tankers are part of every street, and rents in the undamaged districts have risen as people crowd into them.

The rhythm of the day starts early, with bakeries, workshops and markets open before the heat; the middle of the day is quiet in summer; and evenings belong to the park, the cafés and family visits. Rubble clearance, property disputes over damaged homes, water and power supply, and the cost of living dominate conversation, alongside the slow progress of restoration in the old city.

Aleppo is widely held to be Syria's finest food city, and its reputation rests on variety rather than a single dish. Kibbeh — bulgur and minced meat worked into shells, discs, balls and trays — runs to dozens of named versions, including kibbeh safarjaliyeh cooked with quince, kibbeh labaniyeh simmered in yoghurt, and raw and baked forms. Kebab is equally elaborate: kebab halabi seasoned with Aleppo pepper, and the celebrated kebab karaz, grilled meatballs in a sour cherry sauce with pine nuts, served on flatbread.

Mezze fills the table before the grill: muhammara, a paste of red pepper, walnuts and pomegranate molasses that the city claims as its own; hummus with pine nuts; makdous, small aubergines stuffed with walnuts and cured in oil; and shish barak, meat dumplings in hot yoghurt. Aleppo pepper, semi-dried, crushed and salted, gives much of this cooking its warm, slow heat, and pomegranate molasses its sourness.

Sweets are a separate pride. Pistachios grown around the city, the fustuq halabi, go into baklava, mabrumeh rolled in thin pastry, and ice cream beaten with mastic; mamuniyeh, a warm semolina pudding eaten at breakfast, is an Aleppo speciality. Street food means shawarma, falafel, foul and the flat breads topped with meat or thyme that come out of the neighbourhood ovens each morning, and coffee with cardamom or very sweet tea closes every meal and every visit.