The Citadel of Aleppo, one of the oldest continuously occupied settlements in the world, richly preserves layers of its occupation from the Hittite, Hellenistic, Roman, Byzantine, Zangid, Ayyubid, Mamluk, and Ottoman periods. The Mamluks, an Islamic dynasty of “slave soldiers,” occupied Aleppo starting in 1260 until the early sixteenth century, when the Ottomans conquered Syria. (...)
The Citadel of Aleppo, one of the oldest continuously occupied settlements in the world, richly preserves layers of its occupation from the Hittite, Hellenistic, Roman, Byzantine, Zangid, Ayyubid, Mamluk, and Ottoman periods. The Mamluks, an Islamic dynasty of “slave soldiers,” occupied Aleppo starting in 1260 until the early sixteenth century, when the Ottomans conquered Syria. Following a sack of the citadel by the conqueror Timur, known to the West as Tamerlane, in 1400, the Mamluk governors of Aleppo embarked on a large-scale reconstruction program. During the restoration of the citadel a magnificent throne hall was added on top of the twelfth-century fortified entrance complex. The new throne hall was the grandest space in the citadel and it was used for official functions and for entertaining by the rulers of Aleppo and by Mamluk sultans visiting from Cairo. Damaged in a devastating earthquake that struck Aleppo in 1822, the throne hall was heavily restored in the second half of the twentieth century.
