Middle East - Anthony Ham [418]
The main souq, Souq al-Attarine (Map), runs east–west between the citadel and Bab Antakya. Until the development of the New City in the 19th century, this was Aleppo’s main street. In amongst the souqs are numerous khans; the most impressive is the Khan al-Jumruk(Map). Completed in 1574, at one time it housed the consulates and trade missions of the English, Dutch and French, as well as 344 shops. The khan now serves as a cloth market.
On the northern edge of the souqs is the Great Mosque (Al-Jamaa al-Kebir; Map; admission S£25; sunrise to just after sunset), the younger sibling (by 10 years) of the Umayyad Mosque in Damascus. Its most impressive feature is its freestanding minaret dating from 1090.
Inside the mosque is a fine carved wooden minbar, and behind the railing to the left of it is supposed to be the head of Zacharias, the father of John the Baptist. More, perhaps, than the architecture, the mosque’s appeal lies in its life and it is often filled with young and old men who wander in, pick a Quran off the shelves and settle down against a pillar to read, while some chant beautifully at the western end of the prayer hall.
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SAVING THE OLD CITY
To the untrained eye, the Old City of Aleppo is one of the best preserved of its kind in the Middle East, but looks can be deceptive. Misguided planning in the 1950s saw major roads ploughed through the Old City, causing considerable damage, compounded by new building construction, greater pollution and growing property speculation into the 1970s. During this period the number of residents halved (120,000 people now inhabit the Old City), and its geographical area (around 355 hectares) is now around one-third of its late-19th-century extent.
The long and complicated process of restoring the Old City began in 1986, when Unesco inscribed it on the list of World Heritage sites. In 1994, Aleppo municipality joined with the German government (via the offices of the German Agency for Technical Cooperation or GTZ) to undertake a long-term program of rehabilitation. The aim is to improve living conditions within the Old City, by nurturing local communities and businesses to ensure that it survives, not as a museum piece, but as a historic but living entity.
More specifically, according to Rana Nakhal, Public Relations Officer for the project, these goals are to be achieved by overhauling the Old City’s ageing infrastructure, providing interest-free micro-credit to residents to enable them to renovate their homes, promoting economic development within the Old City, developing health and educational facilities and increasing awareness of the city’s heritage values and needs. ‘The residents were not very enthusiastic at the beginning because they did not really know what was happening,’ Ms Nakhal told us. ‘But after we organised special meetings and distributed flyers and posters explaining more about the project, the residents now know that the project will be for the good of the area.’
The scorecard thus far has been impressive. The provision of small loans to residents has seen around 1000 homes renovated and 240 buildings classified as protected historical monuments within the Old City, while GTZ has itself completely rehabilitated a number of buildings. Traffic management and renewal of the water supply and sewer networks are also underway. The exodus from the Old City has also ceased, with population numbers relatively stable for the past few years. Much remains to be done, however: one third of houses in the Old City require urgent structural repairs while another third need maintenance or rehabilitation.
Tourism is certainly part of the plan, but many buildings have been designated off-limits to hotels and restaurants in a bid to preserve their original functions and to slow the exodus