Aleppo & the North

The north was a centre of power early. Ebla, south of Aleppo, ruled a trading kingdom in the third millennium BC and kept its records on clay tablets discovered in the 1970s. Aleppo, known in ancient texts as Halab, was the capital of the Amorite kingdom of Yamhad in the Middle Bronze Age, and the mound under its citadel held a temple of the storm god. The city passed to Hittites, Assyrians, Persians and the Seleucids, who called it Beroea.

In late antiquity the limestone hills west of Aleppo filled with prosperous farming villages that grew olives for export, built stone houses and churches, and made the region a heartland of Syrian Christianity; Simeon Stylites drew pilgrims to his pillar until his death in 459. After the Arab conquest trade shifted, and the villages were slowly abandoned, becoming the Dead Cities.

Aleppo flourished as a frontier capital under the Hamdanid emir Sayf al-Dawla in the 10th century, withstood the Crusaders, and was fortified by Saladin's son al-Zahir Ghazi, who rebuilt the citadel. Under the Ottomans from 1516 it became one of the empire's great commercial cities, with European consuls and merchants in its khans. Armenian survivors of the 1915 deportations settled there in large numbers. From 2012 to 2016 Aleppo was divided by the front line and its eastern half destroyed; Idlib became the last major opposition stronghold, and the 2023 earthquake struck both. The offensive that ended Assad's rule took Aleppo in late 2024.

Aleppines consider their city Syria's cultural capital and Damascus its political one, and the rivalry is old and good-humoured. The city was home to Sunni Arabs, Kurds, Turkmen, and one of the Middle East's most varied Christian populations — Armenian, Syriac, Greek Orthodox and Catholic — in quarters such as Jdeydeh, many of whose families left during the war. Aleppo's dialect, distinct from the Damascene, is quickly recognised across Syria.

Music is the city's pride. Aleppo is famous for tarab, the rapture of classical Arabic song, for its qudud halabiya songs and for the muwashshah tradition, and the singer Sabah Fakhri, an Aleppine, carried them to the whole Arab world. Sufi lodges kept up chanting and dhikr ceremonies.

Crafts include Aleppo soap, made from olive and laurel-berry oil and aged in stacks for months, silk and cotton weaving, and gold in the souks. Idlib province is more rural and conservative, a land of farming families where village and clan loyalties matter and the olive harvest in the autumn gathers whole families.

Aleppo was Syria's largest city before 2011, with about two million people and much of the country's industry in textiles, food processing and pharmaceuticals. Much of the east and the old city was destroyed, and reconstruction is slow and uneven, though markets, workshops and factories are reopening. Idlib province, rural before the war, swelled with displaced people from across Syria, and large camps grew up along the Turkish border; the towns of Idlib, Maarat al-Numan and Jisr al-Shughur are its main centres.

The economy rests on trade with Turkey, farming — olives, wheat, pistachios, figs and cherries — and aid, remittances and small workshops. Electricity has long been scarce, and private generators, solar panels on the roofs, and water tankers are part of every neighbourhood.

In Aleppo the day turns on the workshops and markets, the bakeries and the evening walk in the public garden; in Idlib it follows the farming seasons and the rhythm of families trying to rebuild. Returns to damaged homes, property disputes and the reconnection of the north with the rest of the country are the issues of the moment.

Aleppo is widely held to be Syria's greatest food city. Its kibbeh runs to dozens of varieties, among them kibbeh safarjaliyeh, cooked with quince, and kibbeh labaniyeh, simmered in yoghurt; its kebabs include kebab halabi and the famous kebab with sour cherries. Muhammara here is made with Aleppo pepper and pomegranate molasses, and shish barak, small meat dumplings in hot yoghurt, is a household favourite.

Traditional sweets include mamuniyeh. Aleppo's pistachios, the fustuq halabi, go into baklava, mabrumeh and ice cream, and the sweet shops are as proud of their wares as those of Damascus.

The Idlib hills produce olive oil, olives, figs, cherries and the local green wheat, freekeh, and village bread is baked on the curved saj. Aleppo pepper, semi-dried, crushed and often salted, flavours much of the region's cooking, and coffee and sweet tea close every visit.

Old Aleppo is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and its citadel rises on a steep glacis-covered mound in the centre, reached by a bridge and a fortified gateway, with a throne hall, mosques and a theatre built for concerts in recent decades. Below it run the souks, kilometres of stone-vaulted lanes lined with khans such as Khan al-Wazir and Khan al-Saboun, many burned and damaged in the fighting and some restored. The Great Mosque lost its 11th-century minaret in 2013; the Jdeydeh quarter keeps Ottoman merchants' houses and churches, and the Baron Hotel was a famous stopping place for travellers.

West of the city, on Jebel Sem'an, the church of Saint Simeon Stylites stands on a hilltop in ruins that still show its arches, carved stone and the stump of the pillar. The Dead Cities, listed by UNESCO as the Ancient Villages of Northern Syria, continue into Idlib province: Serjilla with its baths and men's meeting hall, al-Bara with pyramid-roofed tombs among olive trees, and the church of Qalb Lozeh.

In Idlib province itself, Ebla lies at Tell Mardikh, Maarat al-Numan keeps a museum of mosaics from the Dead Cities, and Idlib city is the provincial centre, surrounded by olive groves on red soil.