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INDIVIDUALITY OF ALEPPO 417
stone-built, densely-peopled eastern city, set down in
a depression, green in spring and brown in summer.
Its area is great and its population great for the
area ; more than 200,000 souls live within its boundaries,
and some increase that figure by half and make
Aleppo larger than Damascus and equal to Smyrna.
But that is neither here nor there ; whatever its
population, you see Aleppo as a great, solid, immensely
impressive ancient city which has little of the shabbiness
and decay and makeshift characteristic of so
many Ottoman cities bearing famous names. And
further, you recognise at once that it has a remarkable
individuality.
Every city has its own individuality, the outcome of
site, climate, surroundings, industries, race, government,
religion, traditions, and history, and, by no means
least, the materials and manner in which it builds.
And when you come upon a massively built eastern
city, with a varied history going back 2000 years or
more, a city which has known wealth and importance
and dignity in the past, which is great and flourishing
still, and peopled by many races, an individuality
complex and fascinating may well be expected. Such
an individuality is apparent in Aleppo as a brooding
influence before you have arrived an hour. A consciousness
of great age is here, and the experience
that belongs to age ;
you think of the city as old and
wise, and having seen much in its time ;
you feel, too,
that it has been the setting for many tragedies.
Besides its aspect of present importance it carries
the air of having been important always. The visitor
recognises without need of being told that this has
long been a metropolis in fact, if not in name,
admitting no rival within a wide region. Still more
it owes to the great quality of being massively built
in a style which produces satisfying eflects. The
style may be called a massive Saracenic Gothic, in
which the masonry is of heavy, smooth, squared
stones, often built in parti-coloured bands. Heavy
pointed arches are used, the arch stones frequently in
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