In the 1940s it lost its main access to the sea, Antakya and İskenderun, also to Turkey. At the fall of the Ottoman Empire after World War I, Aleppo lost its northern hinterland to modern Turkey, as well as the important Baghdad Railway connecting it to Mosul. When the Suez Canal was inaugurated in 1869, much trade was diverted to sea and Aleppo began its slow decline. The city's significance in history has been its location at one end of the Silk Road, which passed through Central Asia and Mesopotamia. Such a long history is attributed to its strategic location as a trading center between the Mediterranean Sea and Mesopotamia.įor centuries, Aleppo was the largest city in the Syrian region, and the Ottoman Empire's third-largest after Constantinople (now Istanbul) and Cairo. That is also the time at which Aleppo is first mentioned in cuneiform tablets unearthed in Ebla and Mesopotamia, which speak of it as part of the Amorite state of Yamhad, and note its commercial and military importance. Excavations at Tell as-Sawda and Tell al-Ansari, just south of the old city of Aleppo, show that the area was occupied by Amorites by the latter part of the third millennium BC.

Īleppo is one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world it may have been inhabited since the sixth millennium BC. With an official population of 4.6 million in 2010, Aleppo was the largest Syrian city before the Syrian Civil War however, it is now the second-largest city in Syria, after the capital Damascus.

Aleppo ( / ə ˈ l ɛ p oʊ/ ə- LEH-poh Arabic: ﺣَﻠَﺐ‎ / ALA-LC: Ḥalab, IPA: ) is a city in Syria, which serves as the capital of the Aleppo Governorate, the most populous Syrian governorate.

City plans sim settlements