Aleppo

Every time gardens welcomed us, we said to them ,Aleppo is our aim and you are merely the route. 'Aleppo lies in ruins, a casualty of Syria's brutal civil war. Its streets are cloaked in darkness, its population scattered, its memories ravaged. But this was once once a vibrant world city, where Muslims, Christians and Jews lived and traded together in peace. Few places are as ancient and diverse as Aleppo - one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world - successively Hittite, Assyrian, Babylonian, Persian, Seleucid, Armenian, Roman, Ummayyad, Abbasid and Mameluk. During the Ottoman empire it became the empire's third largest city, after Constantinople and Cairo. Its significance was its position at the end of the Silk Road, at the crossroads of the world's trade, where merchants from Venice, Isfahan and Agra gathered in the largest souq in the Middle East and from which sprang some of the world's most enduring food, music and culture. In this, the first history of Aleppo during, Philip Mansel vividly describes Aleppo at the pinnacle of its cultural and economic power, a poignant testament to this once-vital world city.