A Carpet from Aleppo

One of the first times I visited Aleppo must have been in 1992, when I was Chaplain in Jordan and was covering Syria as well, and so I made a visit not just to the city and the Armenian Evangelical church where we were kindly welcomed, but to the wonderful Suq. I have never been in such a wonderful place for shopping: not even in Jerusalem, when it was in Jordanian control, and not even Istanbul or Damascus, Erbil, Marrakesh or Cairo or Gaziantep. Aleppo's grid-based sloping covered Suq was seemingly endless with meat hanging in the butchers' section, wool being processed and gold glittering, and, in the more touristy parts the wittiest suq-boys.
I bought a Persian rug.

When I saw the footage of the conflagration ripping through the ancient Suq I was appalled. Terrible as the destruction of people's lives has been over these last years, nothing hit me as hard as this. I was slightly ashamed that I reacted like this. Surely, people's lives are more than these old stones.

But for me the warren of tunnels which makes Aleppo's market area is about people's lived. It is about the history of Aleppo (going back to Roman times) and of course that history is a main part of Allepan people's pride: they have a real sense that this is a great city, and the domination by Damascus over the last 90 years has been humiliating for them. Shakespeare doesn't mention Damascus, or Beirut: but Aleppo, of course. It is the great city of the Levant because of the Suq, because of this warren of shops, of trading. When we read Revelation last year, and heard of
The merchandise of gold, and silver, and precious stones, and of pearls, and fine linen, and purple, and silk, and scarlet, and all thyine wood, and all manner vessels of ivory, and all manner vessels of most precious wood, and of brass, and iron, and marble, And cinnamon, and odours, and ointments, and frankincense, and wine, and oil, and fine flour, and wheat, and beasts, and sheep, and horses, and chariots, and slaves, and souls of men
It was to Aleppo that my mind went.
The terrible destruction seems to have been partly the work of the small number of foreign fighters who seem deliberately to have settled in the old city in order to bring in the government army, because the Salafists have no love for Syria's culture and history. Just as a photo of a 'cello broken by the force of the explosion near the Damascus Conservatoire will have appalled many in Syria who love music, so the destruction of the Aleppo Suq will bring tears to their eyes. But to the foreign fighters who are causing a problem to rebels and government troops the cultural destruction brings joy.

I spent years living in Syria, and more visiting. Syrians in general despised the crass ignorance of Saudi tourists who shared none of their cultural values but splashed their money around. Money from Saudi pockets now funds some of the violence, and is destroying not only some Syrian lives but also Syrian culture: including the great trading culture of Aleppo. It is a deliberate act, and one which Syrians, and anyone who has loved Syria must bemoan.