Aleppo may have been lived in since the sixth millennium BC
Northern Syria’s Aleppo, capital of the country’s most populous governorate, held about 2.1 million residents in 2021 estimates and ranks as Syria’s largest city by urban area. Excavations suggest occupation since the sixth millennium BC, with Amorites present by the late third millennium. Few cities wear continuity that long.
Cuneiform tablets from Ebla and Mesopotamia first name the city in the late third millennium BC as part of Yamhad, an Amorite kingdom, noting its commercial and military weight. Its longevity comes from position, a trading crossroads between the Mediterranean and Mesopotamia at one end of the Silk Road. For centuries no Syrian city was larger, and among Ottoman cities only Constantinople and Cairo outranked it.
The name has been remarkably stable. Amorites and Akkadian scribes wrote Ḥalab, Hittites Ḥalpa, and Aramaic speakers Ḥalba. Seleucid rulers renamed it Beroea after a Macedonian city, but locals kept the Semitic name, which survived Arabisation intact. It may come from a root meaning milk, and folklore says Abraham milked his flocks here for travellers; another reading links it to white soils, and the nickname al-Shahba, white mixed with black, is credited to the city's marble.
Decline began when the Suez Canal opened in 1869 and diverted trade to the sea. After the First World War it lost its northern hinterland and the Baghdad Railway link to Mosul to Turkey, then in 1939 its main sea access through Antakya and İskenderun. Damascus has since overtaken it as Syria's most populous city. That slow fade may have helped preserve the old city's medieval architecture, and Aleppo was named Islamic Capital of Culture in 2006.
During the Syrian civil war much of the city was heavily destroyed in the battle of Aleppo, and damaged districts are now being rebuilt.
Source: Aleppo
