THE POSTWAR RECONSTRUCTION OF DESTROYED HISTORIC ZONE IN ALEPPO Students Barışcan Özen Tarık Rasim Nomer Supervisor Prof. Domenico Chizzoniti IMAGE THE POSTWAR RECONSTRUCTION OF DESTROYED HISTORIC ZONE IN ALEPPO Supervisor: Prof. Domenico Chizzoniti Co-Supervisors Prof.Stefano Cusatelli Arch. Flavio Menici Thesis: Barışcan Özen mat: 871178 Tarık Rasim Nomer mat: 873402 INDEX 07 The evolution process of the city 11 The Ancient Era | 3500 b.C. – 312 b.C. 13 Hellenistic-Roman Time | 312 b.C. – 325 a.C. 18 Byzantine Time | 395 a.C. – 634 a.C. 21 Islamic Times | 636 a.C. – 1516 a.C. 30 Ottoman Times | 1516 a.C. – 1918 a.C. 35 Current Times | 1918 a.C. – 2011 a.C. 41 Typological Analysis of the Old City 43 Accessibility and urban patterns 48 The Souk 54 The other main types 64 The courtyard 67 Architectural elements 75 The current condition of the city 77 The Syrian civil war 85 Aleppo’s reconstruction 99 Project Proposal 100 Abstract 101 Project Proposal 111 General Properties 120 Drawings of Project Proposal 154 Bibliography 158 Table of figures 5 The evolution process of the city From ancient time to present day The eternal city, Aleppo, is one of the few ci- sical period. In the course of time, an Islamic ties among the Syrian “first-born” that are still scheme was superimposed on the classical teeming with life. It has been perpetuated than- one, and the city today is the result of this su- ks to its immutable and tight traces, in which perimposition. Thus, different developing sy- exchanges took place in response to needs stem, like the typical cul-de-sac, disrupted the and production: the buildings destroyed after a ancient geometrical street pattern in order to defeat or a looting, the men killed or sent into allow access to the courtyard buildings, which exile, have always replaced to maintain the ef- were created through a division of and encroa- ficiency of this place.1 chment on the older classical-domus and cour- It is difficult to determine the precise age of first tyard houses lots.2 settlements in Aleppo, because ancient traces Built in Islamic times right along the main stre- of the city have been obliterated by modern bu- et of the old Hellenistic city plan, the bazaar ildings, thus, limiting archaeological research. It of Aleppo and its shopping arcades expan- has believed that the human history of Aleppo ded until the 1930s. The Aleppo souk covered begins during in the third millennium BC. Since 160.000 square meters, in which one can still the antiquity it has always been famous being find sail makers, copper beaters, soap makers one of the few important centres of long-distan- and every kind of urban market good. ce trade in the Old World. The city is situated There was a central market in every big capital in the heart of an area of intensive economic which provided a passage for international tra- interaction between the east and the west. Ac- ding of goods, but apart from this, there were cording to that, the city has been ruled by the also local markets with traditional exchange most relevant governors of Mediterranean hi- customs which existed since the earliest times story, such as Hittites, Assyrians, Akkadians, of Islam. The goods were laid on the ground Greeks, Romans, Umayyads, Ayyubids, Ma- and displayed upon the view of the customers. melukes, Ottomans, French and many others. This informal pattern was extended in the fa- For this reason, Aleppo cannot properly be bric of city and villages, with sellers benefitting defined as Islamic city in its traditional origins from the pedestrian flows in many important and configuration; rather it represents the locations in the city: around the gate, close to co-presence of the Classical-occidental with the mosques and the main public buildings. All Islamic-oriental city. In fact, through the re- together, these buildings constituted the core construction of the alignments of the walls of of the main Islamic cities, like Aleppo, cha- the buildings, the reading of the urban fabric racterizing them by their economic power over reveals that Aleppo in its original quadrilateral configuration was entirely planned in the clas- 2 NEGLIA ANNALINDA GIULIA, Aleppo. Processi di formazione della città della città medievale isla- 1 DAVID JEAN CLAUDE, Alep (2002), p. 9 mica (2009) 9 The Ancient Era 3500 b.C. – 312 b.C. the others. The most ancient archaeological finds concer- Texts found in Ebla, refer to a shrine of the The oldest “lives” of Aleppo have left almost ning the origins of Aleppo date from the second storm god located on the main tell yet in the nothing visible and the image of the original city half of the 3rd millennium BC, the Acadian pe- 3rd millennium BC. Since these early times, is not clear except from the times of the Crusa- riod during which the natural environment was the name of the storm god has been closely des, when, becoming a strategic point against changed into an anthropic structure and the associated with Aleppo. Later known as Addu, the Frankish kingdoms of the Holy Land, it has primitive settlements were founded, with the he regained importance in the eighteenth-cen- been partly rebuilt by its prince Nur al-Din. Al- resulting modification of the natural structure of tury BC when Aleppo enjoyed its first political most everything that has existed before has the land and the formation of a series of tell: and economic peak as the capital of the king- been rebuilt or restored. The remains, accu- artificial or semi-artificial high grounds, with a dom of Yamkhad, under king Jarim-Lim. At one mulated over five thousands of years, consti- regular form, formed over the centuries as a time, this territory extended from northern Me- tute the informal matter of the subsoil, and this consequence of the superimposition and stra- sopotamia to the Mediterranean, but the large past, since it cannot be read by archaeology, tification of fictile materials used to build the empire was short-lived, and Aleppo was soon can only be measured by the meter of the con- settlements. The tell correspond to the first dominated by the Mittani and, later, from the siderable depth of the “stratigraphic layers”.3 anthropic “building”, even if still unplanned, of middle of the fourteenth century BC, the Hitti- the Middle-Eastern pre-historic landscape and tes. As a result, the city lost in significance and characterize the structure of the urban and ex- became a centre of only regional importance. tra-urban landscape of Aleppo. The main tell By the end of the second millennium BC, when 3 DAVID JEAN CLAUDE, Alep (2002), p. 11 in Aleppo, the acropolis of the pre-Islamic city immigrant Semitic Arameans and Indo-Euro- and, today, the first Ayyubid and then Mamluk pean Luwians shaped the history of Central citadel, is a jutting semi-artificial high ground, and Northern Syria, Aleppo continued to be a remodelled calcareous outcrop, made higher famous as the spiritual home of the storm god. by human work over time. The strong symbo- The remains of an extraordinary monumental lic character of this truncated-conical outcrop, temple with rich decorative reliefs devoted to about fifty metres higher than the surrounding this deity have recently been excavated on area, almost immediately determined its spe- the citadel hill by a joint Syrian-German team. cialization, representing since prehistoric times This is one of the most important recent archa- an important place of worship on a regional eological discoveries in Syria because for the scale. Later, when the secularization of the first time it documents Aleppo’s history for the Syrian society induced to move the political entire period between the early Syrian and the and administrative centre to the place which Aramean eras.5 once was the religious capital, it became the Another tell, the Tell el-’Akabé (the slope) is wi- military and civil centre.4 thin the walled Mamluk city, near Bab Antakia, 4 NEGLIA ANNALINDA GIULIA, Aleppo. Processi 5 GONNELLA JULIA, Introduction to the Citadel of 1.1 The prospect of the city f Aleppo in Ottoman times. di formazione della città della città medievale isla- Aleppo (pp. 103-138), in BIANCA STEFANO, Syria mica (2009) - Medieval Citadels between East and West (2007) 10 11 Hellenistic-Roman Time 312 b.C. – 325 a.C. The conquest by Alexander the Great and the Beroia, the structure of the building fabric of subsequent rule of the Seleucids marked the Aleppo has been the object of several scien- beginning of Syria’s Hellenistic age, blending tific analysis and has resulted as being a mo- Western with Eastern religious values. Seleu- no-directional structure in which the via recta cids Nicator revived Aleppo as a capital betwe- (the main axis of the settlement) was laid in an en 301 and 281 BC under the name of Beroia. east-west direction and was delimited, on one The territorial and urban structure of the Hel- side, by the main tell, and, on the other side, by lenistic refoundation of Beroia, was not dissi- the Gate of Antioch (Bab Antakia). During its milar from that of the other Seleucid colonies course, the via recta, a wide colonnade road, in Syria, founded in a short lapse of time, fol- was tangent to what has been identified by J. lowing the rules of a scheme easy to be rea- Sauvagetas the Tell el-‘Akabé, the primitive lized and replicated in sites which were cho- settlement which, in this phase, was still loca- sen for their identical aptitude to be settled: in ted beside the Seleucid planned town.2 correspondence of fords, of important nodes On the citadel itself, there is evidence of the along the main caravan routes, in order to con- Hellenistic settlement, with some layers up to trol traffic and commerce.