Aleppo: A History by Ross Burns (review)

Despite what the title of the book indicates, Ross Burns provides much more than simply an overview of the history of this important city in the north of Syria. In approximately three hundred pages, the reader is taken on an exploration of ancient Near Eastern and Middle Eastern history. As with any key city, especially one situated along a geographical thoroughfare, Aleppo's people, places, and events reflect broader historical and cultural occurrences in the region. Thus, Aleppo is a microcosm of larger affairs. As such, its past reminds the reader of the history of Jerusalem, another of the Middle East's pivot locations with a diverse population and a coalescence of faith traditions. What Burns has achieved is both a survey of the core of the Middle East and a detailed treatment of matters specific to Aleppo, and he utilizes the site's architectural history as an effective means to link Aleppo to the outside world.

The book is divided into eleven main chapters with a postscript, covering Aleppo from the Bronze and Iron eras (chapter 1) to the Greco-Roman period (chapter 2) to Byzantine times (chapter 3) to pre-Crusader Islamic history (chapter 4) to the era just prior to and including the early Crusader days (chapter 5) to the era of the initial Crusade (chapter 6) to Zengid rule (chapter 7) to Ayyubid hegemony (chapter 8) to Mamluk dominance (chapter 9) to about half of the Ottoman period (chapter 10) and to the remainder of that era and beyond (chapter 11). The postscript moves the narrative from the twentieth century to the time Burns finished the book when Syria's civil conflict had already reached devastating effects. One minor criticism of the structure of Aleppo is that chapter 11, "Modernising Aleppo (1750–2000)," does not adequately bring things up to the turn of the twenty-first century as anticipated.

Nevertheless, it is a well-conceived and well-organized book. As noted, architecture is an essential aspect of Burns's analysis, and the reader can sense a personal passion for Aleppo's structures. The human tragedy that has affected Syria of late is, of course, even more impactful and saddening than changes to the urban landscape in Aleppo, which are documented in the postscript, but we can join with Burns's in lamentation. The following both recognizes the removal of physical history and serves as an effective way to summarize the nature of Burns's work to the interested reader:

Buildings are not just pretty facades. They are part of the fabric of history and their loss matters. This chronicle of Aleppo's history will frequently pause to look at the buildings that serve as milestones along its path. Today, when self-proclaimed "Islamic state" (IS) is busy destroying all it can get it hands on which remind us of a past they would like to see forgotten, it is all the more important to reassemble these milestones in some semblance of order. While documentary, numismatic and archeological material often give us the precise raw data on a city's history, it is the building record which can give physical form to the narrative.

(xvii)

Burns does engage with archaeology, and one could not write an effective urban history of an ancient city without it. In this sphere, he raised an issue that is worthy of consideration, namely, the "continuity of use" principle whereby it is possible to speculate that locations were used for similar purposes across various eras; hence, even if apparently lacking clear archaeological support, Burns could posit the existence of a Greek-era temple below Aleppo's Great Mosque (34–35; cf. 80). This is a valid observation but does merit some caution when offering any such reconstructions. On a related note, Aleppo has a rich religious history that Burns addresses, and, as elsewhere in the Middle East, a single area can reflect diversity of usage connected to the Abrahamic faith traditions. Indeed, Burns intimated that patriarchal traditions were manipulated to counter Shia Islam and Christianity in the days...