Aleppo

<p><strong>Shortlisted for the 2018 British-Kuwait Friendship Society Book Prize</strong> </p><p>Aleppo is one of the longest-surviving cities of the ancient and Islamic Middle East. Until recently it enjoyed a thriving urban life—in particular an active traditional suq with a continuous tradition going back centuries. Its tangle of streets still follow the Hellenistic grid and above it looms the great Citadel which contains recently-uncovered remains of a Bronze/Iron Age temple complex suggesting an even earlier role as a ‘high place’ in the Canaanite tradition.</p><p>In the Arab Middle Ages Aleppo was a strongpoint of the Islamic resistance to the Crusader presence. Its medieval Citadel is one of the most dramatic examples of a fortified enclosure in the Islamic tradition. In Mamluk and Ottoman times the city took on a thriving commercial role and provided a base for the first European commercial factories and consulates in the Levant. Its commercial life funded a remarkable building tradition with some hundreds of the 600 or so officially-declared monuments dating from these eras. Its diverse ethnic mixture with significant Kurdish Turkish Christian and Armenian communities provide a richer layering of influences on the city’s life.</p><p>In this volume Ross Burns explores Aleppo's rich history from its earliest history through to the modern era providing a thorough treatment of this fascinating city history accessible both to scholarly readers and to the general public interested in a factual and comprehensive survey of the city’s past.</p>