The Connecticut labor press., 1919-09-13

mercenaries; they turned their swords against one another and amid this in- ternecine strife the Byzantine cuiras- siers stormed the walls and came pour ing into the streets, sweeping the last army of "Khabdanos" before them in rout and ruin. For three days the vic tortous army wrought It's will on un- happy Aleppo, while upon the sack and destruction the fallen emir and rem Eant of his army looked down from the walls of the impregnable citadel, per- haps those self-same piles of tawny ma- sCnry which crown the fortress hill to this day. When the Mesopotamians arrived they found that Phokas and his army had quietly retired with their prisoners and plunder, leaving ruin and destitution behind.
 AIeppo in the Middle Ages.
 Aleppo's brief political greatness thus fell beneath the hammer stroke of NicephOros Phokas, but its commercial eminence did not leave 1t. For two centuries it led a precarious political existence-usually in vassalage to the dominant great power. It was part of
  probably the work of his masons is to be seen today in the citadel walls. After Saladfn and his house had passed away Aleppo fell to the Mameluke sul- tans of Egypt. Thither in 14O2 came the terrible Timur (Tamerlane) on his way to overthrow the army of Egypt at Damascus.
 Timur left terrible traces of his pres. ence on Aleppo, but the city, thanks to it's splendid situation, recovered, and for the next century or more, indeed, was at the height of it's prosperity. It was injured by the discovery of the passage round the Cape of Good Hope, but remained great and wealthy until 1922, when 1t was smitten by an earth quake and almost completely de- stroyed, with a loss of life calculated at the lowest at 10000 persons. Dur ing the thirteenth, fourteenth and f1f- teenth centuries it was foremost among the trading cities of the world, and its renown spread far and wide.
 It was from Aleppo that the first pfo- neers of England's Indian trade and empire started on their long journey to the courts of the moghul emperOrs. Doubtless it was from some of them. or reports of their journeys which must have been current in EliZabethan London, that Shakespeare and Marlowe learned of the oriental city. At all events, references to AleppO are to be found in the plays of both-less in Shakespeare than in Marlowe, whose bent was clearly In the direction of ori- enta1 glamor.
 Modern A1eppo still suffers from the destruction wrought by the catastrophe of 1922, but there is no doubt that the researches of skilled archeologists would meet with rich reward in city which has existed continuously for 4,OO0 years, which has seen the char ioteers of Egypt and of Khatti, the phalanx of Alexander and the legfOns of Rome, no less than the mailed horse men of Byzant1um and the savage riders of Timur and Selim the Grim. The citadel walls still stand intact and imposing; the walls of the inner city are mainly in ruins. In the western rampant there survives-in the form of an cription-evidence of the pres ence of the Hittite conQuerors, who WToSI0u NOFIn SyTld rom tuo weak hands of the heretic Pharaoh Akena- ten. The flat roofs of the houses are often laid out as gardens, and south and west of the city extend wide plantations and orchards. Water is supplied by means of an ancient aqueduct, a relic of the Roman rule, which, in Syria, as in Gaul and Brit ain, has left indestructible evidence of it's passion for works of practical util- ity. There is much local industry, and as a principal station on the Trans Syrian railway close to the Bagdad line, Aleppo still occupies a position of great importance. Under civilized rule it has every opportunity of recov- ering its former prosperity.