Middletown transcript. [volume] (Middletown, Del.) 1868-current, 1918-12-21

anOtnef cnanSe was aOOeQ
to the long list of changes
that have come to the ancient Hittite
city whose existence first was noted in
Assyrian, Babylonian and Egyptian
records under the name Of Khalep.
Aleppo, or Khalep, was banded back
and forth with the swaying fortunes of
those times, until it fell before the
wOrld-conquering Alexander and his
Macedonian hosts. Then is when we
began to hear of it in authentic his
tory, says a writer in the Kansas City
Star. Seleucus NicatOr, was one of
the generals who aided Philip. the ia
ther of Alexander. in establishing the
Macedonian kingdom. He went with
Alexander into Asia in 1913 B. C. In
321, when he was twenty-five years old,
he was given the government of the
Babylonian satrapy, which included
Khalep. He gave the city the name OF
Beroea, and as Beroea or Khalep-Be-
roea, it figures historically most of the
time for the next 800 years.
In 648 A. D. it disappeared from
European records under the Saracen
flood that swept up from the south
east. When the wild tribes began to
assume sort of settled state under
MOslem influence, it reappeared as
Halep, the gathering place Of the great
caravans passing from Asia Minor and
Syria to Mesopotamia, Bagtlad and the
Do,.cfon ond Indian EinrIo,,,c
Earthquake and Plague.
In common with most OF the towns
of northern Syria, Aleppo suffered fire.
quently from earthquakes. After ter
rible shock late in the twelfth century
it had to be almost entirely rebuilt.
But neither earthquake nor the plague,
to which it was also peculiarly subject,
could divert from it trade and pros
mercial capitals of the eastern world.
The city passed under various Mos
lem dynasties, being at one time the
northern capital of the famous Saladin.
The Tartars held it awhile in the thir-
teenth century. Then the Mamelukes
came up from Egypt and took it, hold
ing it under their terrible sway until
its final conquest by the OttOmans In
1917.
Under the strong hand of it's new
rulers, the trade Of AleppO was re-
vived. The English had recognized its
importance as commercial station
and 1t became the eastern outpost of
the British Turkey company as early
as the time of Elizabeth. 1t was con-
nected with the western outpost of
the East India company at Bagdad by
Il private caravan service. Its name
was familiar in the England Of that
period. Shakespeare refers to it sew
eral times in his plays and it appears
frequently in the writings Of his con-
temporaries.
Through Aleppo passed the silks of
Bambyce (bombazines), the light tex
tiles of MOsul (mOslllines-muslins) and
many other commodities for the
wealthy and luxurious. The discovery
of the route around the Cape of Good
Hope to India was the first blow to
this trade. The second was the OPEN
ing of land route through Egypt to
the Red sea and the third and final
one was the construction of the Suez
canal.
Long before the Suez canal became
a reality, however, AleppO had been
declining from internal causes. In the
latter part of the eighteenth century
and the first years of the nineteenth it
was constantly the scene Of bloody dis
between rival religious and
secular parties, in which the Ottoman
government took part, first on one side
then Ere u;her, plundering both. Two
and three visitatiOns of
cholera between 1922 and 1882 left
the place wreck with only half its
population. Tumults and mas
sacres of Christians occurred in 1850
and in 1862, accompanied by great de-