Idlib

Idlib is an old settlement on the route between Aleppo and the Orontes, and the town's district has been farmed continuously since antiquity, though the great cities of the area lay outside it. Ebla, at Tell Mardikh a short way to the south-east, ruled a wealthy trading kingdom in the third millennium BC and kept its records on clay tablets, unearthed in excavations that began in 1964, which remain one of the main sources for the Bronze Age in Syria. In late antiquity the limestone hills around the town filled with prosperous villages that grew olives for export and built churches, baths and tombs of dressed stone. Trade routes shifted after the Arab conquest, the villages were gradually abandoned, and they survive as the Dead Cities, listed by UNESCO as the Ancient Villages of Northern Syria.

Under Ottoman rule Idlib was a modest market town in the province of Aleppo, and it kept that role through the French mandate, when the surrounding countryside was reorganised for commercial farming. It became a provincial capital when Idlib Governorate was separated from Aleppo in 1957, growing slowly around trade in olives, olive oil, soap, fruit and grain, with light industry and government offices added in the later 20th century.

From 2011 the province was heavily involved in the uprising and the war that followed. Idlib changed hands, absorbed very large numbers of displaced people from other parts of Syria, and became the last major opposition-held area, which brought years of bombardment and the destruction of much of the province's housing and infrastructure. The earthquake of February 2023 struck an already weakened region. Since the change of government in Damascus in December 2024 the province has been reconnected with the rest of the country.

Idlib's culture is that of the north-western countryside rather than of a metropolis. Extended families and village origins shape social life, and most townspeople can name the village their family came from and the olive terraces that go with it. The population is overwhelmingly Sunni Arab, and the province is more conservative than Aleppo or the coast: mosques set the rhythm of the week, and modest dress is the norm in the street and the market.

Hospitality follows the old pattern of the region. Guests are received in a formal sitting room, tea is poured very sweet in small glasses, and a meal is pressed on visitors long past the point of politeness. Weddings are large and public, with drumming, dabke dancing in lines and processions of cars through the streets, and condolence gatherings after a death are attended by the whole neighbourhood.

The olive harvest in the autumn is the closest thing the province has to a shared seasonal festival, gathering whole families into the groves for weeks of picking and pressing. Craft traditions are practical ones: olive-oil soap-making, wood and stone work, and the weaving of baskets and mats. The war also gave the province an unusually dense civil society of local councils, relief organisations and media outlets, many run by young people, and that experience marks the way public life is discussed here.

The town had about 100,000 people at the last full census, and the population of both the town and the province rose sharply during the war as displaced families arrived from across Syria and settled in rented rooms, unfinished buildings and camps along the Turkish border. Numbers have shifted again since 2024 as people return to their home areas, so any current figure is provisional.

The economy rests on farming and the trade that goes with it: olives and olive oil above all, along with figs, cherries, pistachios, wheat and vegetables from the red soil, with small workshops, soap-making, transport and shops in the town, and a large presence of aid organisations. Work is often informal, and remittances from relatives abroad matter to many households. Electricity and water supply are unreliable, and rooftop solar panels, generators and tankers are ordinary fixtures.

Days begin early, with the produce market at its busiest in the first hours and again at dusk, and slow in the heat of the afternoon. Evenings are spent visiting, in cafés or on balconies. The pressing concerns are the clearance of rubble and unexploded ordnance, rebuilding damaged homes, disputes over property left by people who fled, school places for a young population, and the return of families still living in camps.

Idlib eats the food of the northern Syrian countryside: plainer than Aleppo's and built around what the province grows. Olive oil is on every table, poured over labneh, hummus and foul for breakfast and used in cooking rather than butter. Bread comes thin and blistered from the domed saj griddle or in flat loaves from the neighbourhood oven, and the manaqish baked in the mornings are spread with zaatar and oil or with minced meat.

Freekeh, green wheat roasted while still soft and then cracked, is the local grain speciality, cooked as a pilaf with lamb or chicken or added to soup, and burghul does the same work in kibbeh and in salads. Kibbeh here is homelier than the Aleppine versions, often baked in a tray. Mezze leans on the produce of the hills: makdous, small aubergines stuffed with walnuts, garlic and pepper and kept in oil; muhammara made with pepper paste and walnuts; and pickles of every kind. Lamb and chicken are grilled over charcoal, and stews of meat with vegetables are served on rice.

The fruit of the province is famous within Syria — cherries, figs, grapes and pistachios — and much of it is dried or made into syrups and jams for the winter. Sweets are simple: semolina cakes, pastries with pistachio, and dates. Very sweet tea is drunk all day, and Arabic coffee with cardamom marks every formal visit.