page_title: Central Synagogue of Aleppo
section_title: Architecture and layout
hierarchical_section_title: Central Synagogue of Aleppo / Architecture and layout
caption_attribution_description: English: Central Synagogue of Aleppo
context_page_description: The Central Synagogue of Aleppo, also known as the Great Synagogue of Aleppo, Joab's Synagogue or Al-Bandara Synagogue, has been a Jewish place of worship since the 5th century C.E. in Aleppo. When it functioned, it was considered the main synagogue of the Syrian Jewish community. The synagogue is noted as being the location where the Aleppo codex was housed for over five hundred years until it was removed during the 1947 Aleppo pogrom, during which the synagogue was burned. This synagogue still stands.
context_section_description: The older portions of the synagogue were built in the Byzantine period, perhaps as early as the 9th century. Damaged in the Mongol sack of Aleppo in 1400, the building underwent extensive changes in 1405-1418. With the arrival of the Sephardim in Aleppo in the 16th century, a wing on the eastern side of the main courtyard was built. On the southern part of this wing, facing Jerusalem, is a small room known as the "cave of Elijah." Within the porticoed-courtyard, is a raised, covered "tevah," or reader's platform, which the congregation used seasonally. It was in this form that Della Valle viewed the synagogue. It remained essentially unchanged until it was looted and burned in the riots of 1947.
  The synagogue included from the very beginning an adjacent courtyard that was used as an open-air synagogue in the summertime. According to the Talmud, it was customary for a synagogue to have its roof removed during the summer (Baba Batra, 3:2), except for over the Holy Ark and the bimah for the cantor.
  The synagogue edifice was divided into three main sections: a central courtyard that separated the western wing, where in modern times the musta'arabi community used to worship, from the eastern section built at a later time during the 16th century and which served as Beth Midrash and prayer hall of the "Francos", i.e. Sephardi Jews that settled in the town after the Spanish exile and other European Jews that happened to sojourn in Aleppo. An additional enclosed small courtyard was bordering the eastern wing farther to the east.
  The western hall had three heichaloth (Holy Arks); there were another three heichaloth on the southern wall ("the Zion Wall") of the courtyard, and a seventh Holy Ark, located in the eastern wing close to the courtyard, also on the southern wall pointing to the direction of Jerusalem that was named Cave of Eliyahu or Heichal/Me'arat Eliyahu. Here old Sifrei Torah and Bible manuscripts (Keter) were kept. It is here where the Aleppo codex was housed for over five hundred years until 1947. Keter Aram Soba (The Aleppo Codex) is considered the most authoritative manuscript of the Masoretic text of the Bible. The Jews believed that the day that the Aleppo Codex gets removed from Aleppo is the day that their community will be destroyed. It turns out that this actually occurred.
caption: The courtyard of the synagogue and its outdoor Tevah in 2011
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