ALEPPO, a district and city in Syria. Under Turkish rule the name of the city (Halab) was borne also by a vilayet and a sanjaq. With the British occupation of the area in 1918 an Arab military governor was installed and when France took possession of Syria under the League of Nations mandate Aleppo gave its name to one of the five etats (territories) into which Syria was divided. In 1925 the etats of Aleppo and Damascus were united to form one etat, Syria, with seven sanjaqs, of which Aleppo is one. Tobacco is largely grown and the district is one of the centres of the silk industry. Wheat and a small quantity of hemp are also grown.
The city stands on a plateau in the valley of the Kuwaik (anc. Chalys) iom. above its dissipation in the salt marsh El-Matkh.
History.—Asearly as 2000 B.C., when the "kings of Aleppo held a great kingdom," the Hittite monarch Murshil I. swept down through the Taurus passes and took the city. The Pharaoh Thutmose III. seized it (1490 B.c.) when he marched north, "laying waste the settlements of the foe of wretched Naharin." About the middle of the 15th century its king allied himself with the king of Hanigalbat, but the Hittite Tudhalia I. defeated them and sacked Aleppo. The city recovered only to fall victim to his successors Hattushil and Subbiluliuma, the latter of whom made Telipinush, his son, its king. The region became the battleground between Egypt and the Hittites and the struggle for its possession is reflected in the preface to the treaty (c. 1310 B.c.) between Murshil III. and Rimisharma, king of Aleppo. At the battle of Kadesh on the Orontes (1288 B.c.), where Ramses II. barely escaped defeat, a king of Aleppo took part on the Hittite side and was all but drowned. The Egyptians have depicted on their monu ments "the wretched chief of Aleppo turned upside down by his soldiers after his majesty had hurled him into the water." In 854 B.c. Shalmaneser II. of Assyria visited the city and sacri ficed to Adad. Seleucus Nicator (312-28o B.c.) enlarged Aleppo and named it Beroea, after the Macedonian city. In 164 B.C. Menelaus, the fomenter of war with the Asmoneans, was put to death by being thrust down into a tower filled with embers, a form of execution peculiar to the place. The name Halab re appears with the Arab conquest of Syria (A.D. 638), when the city was occupied without opposition by Abu 'Ubaidah. The Ham danid Saif ed-Daulah (A.D. 936-967), who called himself "king of Aleppo," made Halab his residence, but the Byzantine Niceph orus Phocas surprised and sacked the city (962) but failed to capture the citadel. It was temporarily occupied by John Zimisces, emperor of Byzantium in 974. Shortly afterwards it received and acknowledged the Egyptian Fatimides, and twice, from 1038-42 and io58-6o, Egyptian troops garrisoned the town. From 1090 it formed part of the Seljuk dominion. Then succeeded the unsettled times of the Crusades. The Crusaders, although they seized its territory, never occupied the city. They besieged it in i I i 8 and again in 1 1 24 (Baldwin II.), when, after four months, it was reduced to the utmost extremity before being relieved by an army from Mosul. The I2th century saw three serious earth quakes, I 114, 1139, and the most serious of all, I 1 70, after which the city had to be rebuilt by Nur ed-Din. Benjamin of Tudela visited it in 1173. Saladin made it his northern base and strong hold against the Crusading princes of Antioch (1183) . The Tatar invasions of the 13th and 14th centuries engulfed it, and with the rest of Syria it came under the Mameluke sway at the end of the 13th century. Aleppo surrendered to Tamerlane when he made an incursion into Syria (I400–oI ). The Mameluke rule in Syria was finally overthrown by the triumph of the Ottoman Turks under Selim I. in 1517, the decisive battle being at Merj Dabik, a day's journey west of Aleppo. From the i6th to the 19th centuries it remained in Turkish hands. In the latter part of the i8th and the beginning of the 19th century it suffered grievously from internal feuds (in which the Janissaries took an active part), which were exploited by the Ottoman governors for their own ends. Earthquakes in 1822 and 183o and visita tions of cholera in 1823, 1827 and 1832 left the city a wreck and its population greatly diminished. It could offer but feeble resist ance to the army of Mohammed Ali of Egypt in 1833. It then became the centre of Egyptian domination in Syria until it was restored to the Turks in 184o. Tumults and massacres of Chris tians occurred in 185o and 1862. On Oct. 26, 1918, it was occu pied by the 5th cavalry division of the Egyptian expeditionary force. Aleppo showed hostility to the French army of_ occupa tion when it replaced the British in 192o.