‘Aleppo: from World City to Civil War’ a lecture by Dr Philip Mansel
Aleppo is one of the oldest, continuously inhabited cities in the world. It was successively ruled by the Assyrian, Persian, Greek, Roman, Arab, Ottoman and French empires. Following the Ottoman conquest in 1516, it became the empire’s third largest city, after Constantinople and Cairo. It owed its wealth to its position at the end of the Silk Road, at a crossroads of world trade.
Using unpublished pictures and photographs, in this talk Philip Mansel shows that Aleppo was a city which challenged categories and generalisations. For four hundred years, whatever their origin, its inhabitants had lived together relatively peacefully. The reasons for this harmony, and for its destruction in the Syrian civil war, are the subject of this talk.
Tickets can be booked via nomadstent.co.uk/products/philip-mansel-zoom-talk. Donations and any proceeds after basic costs go to Mercy Corps. Attendees can obtain Philip’s book Aleppo: the Rise and Fall of Syria’s Great Merchant City with an exclusive 30% discount from the publisher Bloomsbury.