Syria: A marquetry shop in the ancient Great Bazaar (<i>suq</i>), Aleppo (1997)

Aleppo's Great Bazaar (in Arabic, "suq" or "souq") as we know it today was rebuilt first by the Egyptian Mamelukes who drove out the Mongols, and then, after 1516, by the Turks who incorporated Aleppo into the Ottoman Empire. During the Syrian Civil War, which started in 2011, Aleppo's historic "suqs" suffered serious damage. Aleppo, the second city of Syria and quite possibly the longest continually inhabited settlement in the world, is of venerable age. So old, indeed, that its Arabic name, Halab, is first mentioned in Semitic texts of the third millennium BCE. Situated in the north-west of the country, just a few kilometres from the Turkish frontier, Aleppo is located at the confluence of several great trade routes and, as a city of commerce, has always been rich.