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Aleppo: The Rise and Fall of a World City
Aleppo The Rise and Fall of a World City Author:Philip Mansel ?Every time gardens welcomed us, we said to them,Aleppo is our aim and you are merely the route.?Few cities 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, Mameluk and Ottoman, where it became the e... more »mpire?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. Today, it lies in ruins?a casualty of Syria?s war. In this, the first history of the city during and after the Ottoman era, Philip Mansel vividly describes Aleppo at the pinnacle of its cultural and economic power, a poignant testament to this once-vital world city.« less