Aleppo

Aleppo's covered souks stretch for thirteen kilometers—the longest in the world—because the city has been a commercial crossroads since at least the third millennium BCE. Located midway between the Mediterranean and the Euphrates, Aleppo sits at the junction where east-west trade between Mesopotamia and the sea intersects north-south routes between Anatolia and Arabia. This geographic position made it wealthy; it also made it a target. The city has been besieged, conquered, and damaged by Hittites, Assyrians, Persians, Greeks, Romans, Mongols, Crusaders, Ottomans, and in the twenty-first century, its own government.

The Citadel of Aleppo—a massive fortification rising from a tell (artificial mound) in the city center—has been continuously occupied since at least the third millennium BCE. Archaeological evidence shows thirteen distinct layers of civilization. The Ayyubid dynasty's thirteenth-century reconstruction made it one of the most impressive military fortifications in the medieval world. Below the citadel, the Great Mosque (built 715 CE) and the network of khans (merchant inns) and hammams formed an integrated commercial infrastructure: a city designed for trade from its foundations up.

Aleppo rivaled Damascus throughout Ottoman rule, often surpassing it economically. European trading companies maintained permanent consulates. The city specialized in soap (made from local olive oil and laurel), silk, and cotton textiles. After Syrian independence, Aleppo became the country's industrial capital—manufacturing textiles, pharmaceuticals, and processed food—while Damascus remained the political center. This dual-capital structure mirrored many Middle Eastern countries but was unusually balanced: Aleppo's industrial GDP roughly matched Damascus's governmental economy.

The Syrian civil war devastated Aleppo more thoroughly than any city in the conflict. The four-year Battle of Aleppo (2012–2016) split the city between government-held west and rebel-held east. Barrel bombing, tunnel warfare, and a siege that cut food and medical supplies to 250,000 people in eastern Aleppo turned the city into the war's defining battlefield. UNESCO-listed heritage sites—including sections of the souks, the Great Mosque's minaret (destroyed in 2013), and parts of the citadel—suffered severe damage. An estimated 31,000 people were killed in Aleppo alone. The city's pre-war population of 2.3 million collapsed to under one million at the siege's worst point. The opposition's capture of Aleppo in late 2024, as part of the broader offensive that toppled the Assad regime, began a new chapter—but reconstruction of the souks, mosques, and industrial base will require decades and billions that Syria does not possess.