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Show . 5S02H3333 d I-' -:. ?tM JSQtr,yMmv,ww.,.. -vw ,sw,w.-..ww- ws . . -v View of Aleppo and Its Citadel. Ibis day. When the Mesopotnmians arrived they found that Phokas and his army had quietly retired with their prisoners and plunder, leaving ruin and destitution behind. Aleppo in the Middle Ages. Aleppo's brief political greatness thus fell beneath the hammer stroke of Nicephoros Phokas, but its commercial eminence did not leave it. For two centuries it led a precarious political existence usually in vassalage to the dominant great power. It was part of the empire of the mighty Saladin, and probably the work of his masons is to le seen today in the citadel walls. After Saladin and his house had passed away Aleppo fell to the Mameluke sultans sul-tans of Egypt. Thither in 1402 came the terrible Tlmur (Tamerlane) on bis way to overthrow the army of Egypt at Damascus. Timur left terrible traces of his presence pres-ence on Aleppo, but the city, thanks to its splendfd situation, recovered, and for the next century or more, indeed, was at the height of its prosperity. It was injured by the discovery of the passage round the Cape of Good Hope, but remained great and wealthy. until 1822, when it was smitten by an earthquake earth-quake and almost completely destroyed, de-stroyed, with a loss of life calculated at the lowest at 20,000 persons. ' During Dur-ing the thirteenth, fourteenth and fifteenth fif-teenth centuries it was foremost among the trading cities of the world, and its renown spread far and wide. It was from Aleppo that the first pioneers pio-neers of England's Indian trade and empire started on their long journey to the courts of the moghul emperors. Doubtless it was from some of them, or reports of their journeys which must have been current in Elizabethan London, that Shakespeare and Marlowe learned of the oriental city. At all events, references to Aleppo are to be found In the plays of both less in Shakespeare than in Marlowe, whose bent was clearly In the direction of oriental ori-ental glamor. Modern Aleppo still suffers from the destruction wrought by the catastrophe of 1822, but there is no doubt that the researches of skilled archeologlsts would meet with rich reward In a city which has existed continuously for 4,000 years, which has seen the charioteers char-ioteers of Egypt and of Khatti, the phalanx of Alexander and the legions of Rome, no less than the mailed horsemen horse-men of Byzantium and the savage riders of Timur and Selim the Grim. The citadel walls still stand intact and imposing; the-walls of the inner city ALEPPO, The capture nf which by '.General Allenby on October Octo-ber 20, 1018, was .the culmination culmina-tion fif the conquest of Syria, Is, like Damascus and Konleh, one of - the ancient cities of the world. Tt may, indeed, he older tliam either; certainly cer-tainly it appears in history as early as Damascus and l.ef.ore Konie.b. It was one of the Syrian towns -captured by the Egyptian conqueror. Tholhmes HI, ahout 1480 B. C, and thereafter is of frequent occurrence in the agitated annals of those early times, says writer in the Sphere. Under Roman ruin It enjoyed a long period of prosperity. pros-perity. Its ancient Syrian name of Halban, or Khalban, was corrupted by the Greeks into Chalyhon, but it was also known as Berea. When, after seven centuries of Roman rule, it fell into the hands of the Arabs, it was called by them Haleb, a nearer approximation approx-imation to its ancient name than the Greek Chalyhon. The Venetian and other Italian visitors, of whom there were many in the middle ages, blundered blun-dered Haleb into Aleppo that is, they dropped the aspirate, as Latins so often do, sounded the final "b" as a "p," and added in the arbitrary fashion of Romans, Greeks and Italians thrlr termination "o." The secret of Aleppo's long prosperity, prosper-ity, which endured even under Turkish rule, is its splendid commercial position posi-tion at the junction of at least four great trade routes. This was perhaps largely due to the destruction of Palmyra Pal-myra (Tadmor) by Aurelian, after which the bulk of the trade which had passed through the city of Solomon and . . Zenobla now diverted .itself by a more northerly route through Aleppo. Al-eppo. By caravan It traded with Persia and India through Mesopotamia, Mesopota-mia, with Egypt by way of Damascus, with Asia Minor and Constantinople by the ancient route through Taurus-. In Romano-Persian times the caravans passed by Ctesiphon.but after the Sara cen conquest was the half-way station pi) the way to Persia. Byzantine Versus Hamadanite. During the middle ages Aleppo's existence ex-istence was a life of stormy magnificence. magnifi-cence. During the earlier wars of the Saracens with the eastern Roman empire em-pire It was more than once taken and retaken. In the tenth century it be- came the seat of a brilliant local dy nasty from Hamadan in Persia. The most noted ruler of this family was Seyf-ed-Din, whom the Byzantine historians his-torians call "Kbabdanos," i. e., the Hamadanite. Seyf-ed-Din kept great i . . - state at Aleppo, and probably the chief portions of the present fortifications of the citadel were built by him, though is quite possible that they are older. He was a patron of art and literature and also a mighty warrior, who led many expeditions against the eastern Roman empire with alternate success and defeat, After much success he sustained a terrible defeat in 001 in -the Taurus passes, and himself escaped only by a bieakneck scramble up a precipice. Next year his fate was upon him, for 1he great Byzantine marshal, Nice- . phoros Phokas, soon to be emperor-regent, marched against Aleppo with all the available forces of the East. Seyf-ed-Din made desperate efforts; he levied, lev-ied, all the citizen? of Aleppo and intrenched in-trenched himself to guard the approaches ap-proaches to bis capital, while In Mes- are mainly in ruins. In the western rampart there survives in the form of an inscription evidence of the presence pres-ence of the Hittite conquerors, who wrested North Syria from the weak hands of the heretic Pharaoh Akena-ten. Akena-ten. The flat roofs of the houses are often laid out as gardens, and south and west of the city extend wide plantations and orchards. Water is supplied by means of an ancient aqueduct, a relic of the Roman rule, which, in Syria, as in Gaul and Britain, Brit-ain, has left indestructible evidence of its passion for works of practical utility. util-ity. There is much local industry, and as a principal station on the Trans-Syrian Trans-Syrian railway close to the Bagdad iine, Aleppo still occupies a position of great importance. Under civilized 1 rule it has every opportunity of recovering recov-ering Its former prosperity. opotumia a holy war was proclaimed, and the troops of Mosul, Edessa. Mar-din Mar-din and many other places marched to lho relief of Aleppo. Could all these forces unite the Byz'.-.ntine general must have been j.efoated, but he was so prompt that he reached his goal before be-fore the Mosopotaminns could arrive. By ope of those masterly turning movements move-ments which in those days only Byzantine By-zantine generals and Byzantine troops could achieve, Phokas flanked Seyf-ed-Dln out of ids inlrench'ments and forced him to fight in the open before the city gates. He was utterly defeated, defeat-ed, and as his beaten troops poured back into Aleppo sedition broke out. The citizen soldiers laid the blame of the rout, upon the Arab and Turkish mercenaries; they turned their swords against ote another, nnd amid this Internecine In-ternecine strife the Byzantine cuirassiers cuiras-siers stormed the walla and came pouring pour-ing Into the streets, sweeping the last auiiy of "Kbabdanos" before them In rout and ruin. For three days the victorious vic-torious army wrought Its will on unhappy un-happy Aleppo, while upon the sack and destruction the fallen emir and a remnant rem-nant of his army looked down from the walls of the Impregnable citadel, perhaps per-haps those self-same piles of tawny ma-BODry ma-BODry which crown the fortress hill to |