There is absolutely no need to introduce the Syrian city of Aleppo. Having regularly made world news for a few years now, it has become headline news all around the world recently because of the increasing horror associated with the Battle of Aleppo. The situation of Aleppo before the war was, obviously, entirely different than what it is nowadays. The city has become somewhat of a symbol of the pointlessness of the Syrian civil war. Hundreds of thousands of people, most of them civilians, have been killed while many historic buildings have been utterly destroyed. Everyone knows what the city looks like now, but in case you’re wondering what life in Aleppo before the war was like, here are some beautiful Aleppo photos.
There’s no need for too much text in this post. Simply scroll down and see what Aleppo looked like only five years ago.
Aleppo Photos Before the War in Syria
It used to be the third-biggest city in the Ottoman Empire, third only after Constantinople (modern-day Istanbul) and Cairo. It was the second-largest city in Syria and the country’s economic capital. Before the war, Aleppo was home to more than two million people, making it one of the most important cities in the entire Levant.
The city’s historic location between the Mediterranean Sea and Mesopotamia (modern-day Iraq) made it a major trading center for literally millennia. The earliest documentations of Aleppo date back to the 3rd millennium BC. It has been—and still is—one of the world’s oldest inhabited cities.
This all makes it all the more crushing to see it destroyed. Both historic sites and human lives have been lost. It’s a disaster of catastrophic proportions, of a magnitude comparable, maybe even exceeding, the horrors of Rwanda and Srebrenica.
After looking at these wonderful Aleppo photos before the war, we would love to hear your opinions and thoughts on this terrible war. Please share them in the comments below.