We arrive in Aleppo at ten o’clock at night. Dani’s dad, Salvatore, affectionately known as Nonno (although his full name is Nonno Gelato) had caught the same Royal Jordanian flight from Amman as we. He was returning from (I think) Ethiopia.
With his experience and quasi VIP status he has us all at the head of the pack as we go through customs and out to claim our baggage. It is forbidden to enter Syria without a visa (which we all have).
We are met outside the exit by a driver organised by Nonno’s work to pick him up. It is night and there is nothing of colour in the buildings or the landscape bringing a sense of travelling in black and white. Then we see the lights of the city: dull, in orange or green. Green, the colour of Islam, stands out in the dull orange or white light.
The buildings are masonry. All seem two or three stories high apartment buildings. It is Friday night. And it is the custom of the local families to picnic by the roadside on this night of the week. So in small groups of 5 or 6, most sitting on the footpath, or on the kerb, a few with plastic tables and chairs brought out for the occasion, some in the median strips of the larger roads, they eat.
IN Italy we had to get used to late rising etc. For example the hotel above Bevagna held breakfast from 8-10am. Dinner is typically starting around 8pm and lunch anytime from 1-3pm.
IN Syria the locals go out for dinner at 10pm, go to bed at 2 or 3am. We have to wait until 7:30 to eat out tonight because the restaurant won’t open before that!
It is hot. Hot and dry. It was 15° when we left Roma and 30° when we reach Amman at 6pm. It is a little cooler in Aleppo, but not by much. None of us sleep well although it is after midnight when we settle into bed.
Saturday we venture out with Nonno to the Aleppo souk and our first glimpse of the Citadel. Stephania (Nonno’s wife of 18 months and partner of 18 years) stays home to catch up with the house stuff. Both of them have returned to Aleppo on the day of our arrival after being away from home for two weeks.
Firstly though Nonno’s work car won’t start: dead battery. So we catch a cab. Aleppo is full of yellow taxis. All are 5 seater, 4 cylinder little sedan cars, coloured buttercup yellow. Nonno says the main qualification to drive a taxi is to know how to operate the car horn. Traffic is reminiscent of India (without the motorbikes, three wheelers or cows): chaotic.
A city is a city, but each has its character. Aleppo is busy. The better modern buildings are faced with yellow stone that is a sandstone colour. The older buildings are grey with age. Some are simply stone with a little rub of render. There is a style of public building design that may have come from the Russians (who had influence here for many years).
We visit Salvatore and Stefania’s workplace: ICARDA (International Centre for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas). It is about 25 minutes out of Aleppo, on top of a small hill in acres of research farmland. Salvatore and Stefania specialise in barley, and in Participatory Plant Breeding, that is, scientific experimentation in breeding (by natural means) barley to suit the purposes of the farmers in various parts of the world by allowing, including and encouraging the farmers to plant, select and control the barley seed/crop.
On the site we visit an old Roman water supply tunnel. This was discovered by workers building an internal road on the ICARDA site and is thought to be part of a water system that brought water 50km from up near the border with Turkey south to some now lost and forgotten city.
There are old water cisterns on the top of the hill, and we see some tanoor that have been installed for the use of staff. It is like an Indian Tandoor.
The city of Aleppo lies in a great wide brown saucer. At the centre is the Citadel. It sits on a mound that goes back to the Neo-Hittites (no doubt much cooler and more hip than the old Hittites), and is understood to go back earlier, they just can’t dig any deeper without destroying it.
The citadel is a fort, perched on a flat topped mound. The incline on the mound is 48° (the same as the incline on the Pilatus rail-line if you remember the mountain near Lucerne, Switzerland we visited).
I have now some information that Tai put together about Aleppo and the Citadel:
Background-City of Aleppo
Very little is known about the founding of Aleppo as it has scarcely been touched by archaeologists. There is a legend that Abraham came through the city with his livestock and camped on the hill, he then gave the people of the city a milk supply. The hill is where the Citadel now sits today.
The site has been occupied for at least 5000 years and has been known as a human settlement for at least 4000 years, it was also the capital of an independent kingdom closely related to Ebla [we visited Ebla the next day]. The Silk Road was a major trading route that went all the way from China and connected Asia, the Middle East, Europe and northern Africa passing through the city of Aleppo. This traded silk from China all over the world for all sorts of different items. In the picture below Aleppo is at the junction of the two red lines at the eastern end of the Mediterranean.
Many different people occupied Aleppo and no one really knows who were the first, what we do know is that people occupied Aleppo even before the neo- Hittites which is more than 3000 years ago. After that Aleppo was dominated by the Assyrians (4-8th century BC), followed by the Neo-Babylonians and the Persians (539-333). Then Aleppo was taken by the armies of Alexander the Great. After the Romans deposed the Greeks in 64 BC, the citadel hill continued to have religious significance, Muslim troops then captured the city in 636 AD. The citadel was damaged by the Mongol invasion of 1260 and again destroyed by the second Mongol invasion led by Tamerlane which swept through Aleppo in 1400-1. They also replaced the flat roof of the throne hall in the citadel with 9 domes. During the Ottoman period, the military role of the citadel as a defence fortress slowly diminished as the city began to grow outside the city walls and was taking its form as a commercial metropolis.
Aleppo and the citadel rose to the peak of its importance in the period during and after the Crusader presence in the Near East.
The Aleppo Citadel
There is little known about when the citadel was built but some remains date back to 5000years ago. The main part you can go and see today was built by the Mamelukes after the Mongols destroyed it in their second attack.
The oldest part that was uncovered was the Sumerian temple of the storm god. People living in the citadel were much the same as the rest of Aleppo, such as the Assyrians, Greeks, Romans and Ottomans.
It was a very effective fortress, some of the reasons were, the hill that the citadel was mounted on was coated with bricks no make climbing almost impossible, the entrance gate was heavily fortified, after the entrance gates there was a series of right angled turns to prevent the horses from gaining speed, dotted across the wall where arrow slits and funnel holes where defenders could shoot arrows and pour boiling oil, in the old city there were caves which led to tunnels which people could go into that would take them to the citadel to escape an attack.
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