Day 21 - Aleppo (Halep)

The Turkcell SIM card I have bought isn't working here, I guess the card isn't allowed to roam in Syria so we're just making due with our Canadian roaming plans.

Leila joined us in the morning and we walked to the Omyiad Mosque. Leah and Leila have to wear funny robes but as I'm a man I'm okay with pants and a T-shirt. In our bare feet the stone floor is really hot from the sun, and we try to avoid the hotter black stones. The mosque sports an unusual square minaret at one corner, and some sections of the mosque are closed to either men or women. Of course I blunder and am pushed away from the Ladies hall. We actually get to see the man singing the call to prayer, which is neat as this is usually blared out of loudspeakers on the minarets, but we never knew if it was a person or a recording.

Later we walked through the markets, and we're all immersed in the smells and sights of the place. We pop out into bright sunlight and we're at the Citadel, a huge Muslim castle. It has a huge moat, sloping walls pierced with narrow vertical windows for archer placements, and a long and narrow entry bridge into the castle.


The castle door is at 90 degrees to the bridge, a defensive measure to make it difficult for elephants to bash in the doors. Above are round holes in the roof, apparently portals to pour boiling oil on attackers. Many narrow windows line the walls, flat to the outside but apses on the inside to protect the archers, but also allow them a wide range of attack.

Once through the citadel walls things get more jumbled. Leila explains that there are so many layers of history buried here that in some places archeologists are unwilling to destroy valuable upper layers to expose the lower layers. We're in the sun again at the top of the castle and we stop for water at a little cafe. From here we relax and look out upon massive Aleppo, its name comes from the white stone that makes up most of its building material, and you can really see it as the city stretches for miles and miles from up here on the Citadel.

We go inside the castle walls again at stumble upon a very impressive royal chamber, with very beautiful and intricate woodwork. I say we stumbled upon it as there is no signage, and another couple we met actually missed this section entirely. We follow what was once a secret passage for the royals into a defensive chamber above the main entry hall. Here we can look down through holes into the hall, holes through which boiling oil may once have passed.

We eat a late lunch/early dinner with Leila and puff away on the nargileh (water pipe, or hubbly bubbly in the Aleppo tourist lingo).