Aleppo — From Turkey into Syria

Entering Syria at Aleppo

I went to Turkey for an extended trip. The plan — to the extent that I had one — was to travel east from İstanbul to Cappadocia and Nemrut Dağı. Then, from there, generally make my way back west to southwestern Turkey, visiting Ephesus again before returning to İstanbul and flying back home.

I was hoping to visit Syria, but I was not sure that it would work out. The trick was to get a visa. The details are in the later page on logistics, but I got one. After a few days seeing the great sights in İstanbul, I headed east with a Syrian visa. It was good for 14 days out of a 31-day period.

As planned, I spent several days in Göreme, seeing Cappadocia, then took a bus further east to Malatya to go up Nemrut Dağı. Along the way I had met a couple of girls from New Zealand, they were also heading into Syria and so we joined up.

We were leaving Gaziantep in the middle of the afternoon. Looking back, that wasn't the best plan. There wasn't a bus south to the Syrian border as the bus companies said that the border would be closed. But a dolmuş was leaving. A Turkish dolmuş is a shared van, a van or minibus with bench seats. It has no fixed schedule, it leaves when it's full enough. You pay by passing your cash forward to the driver or someone sitting in the front and handling the payments. The cost of the ride depends on how far you're going.

A U.S. Government chart showing Gaziantep, Kilis, the Turkish-Syrian border, and Aleppo.

There was a dolmuş leaving for Kilis, on the Syrian border just south of Gaziantep and north of Aleppo. We strapped our packs to the roof and got in.

The village of Kilis was a few kilometers short of the border itself, but a guy with a pickup truck was heading that way, or at least he was willing to for a little cash.

The border crossing itself was a little bleak, two government blockhouses separated by about 500 meters of no-man's land. Lots of formality and passport and visa checking in the Turkish one, then a pickup truck ride to the Syrian side for further formalities.

Now what?

There's nothing but farmland and a small village on the Syrian side....

One of the Syrian border guards negotiated a ride for us with an older guy who had an immaculate 1950s DeSoto. It was just US$ 15 for the three of us for the 60 kilometers from there to Aleppo. Many classic U.S. automobiles are still on the road in Syria.

American classic cars on the streets in Syria.

Arrival in Aleppo

The driver dropped us at the main bus station. In the first half block we passed a couple of soldiers who smiled and said, "Welcome to Syria!"

Not at all what I expected...

A few times in Syria I was told something like, "Well, our governments don't really get along," but that was always followed with, "But you, you are welcome to Syria!" Almost everyone was delighted, and often very surprised, to learn where I was from. The biggest hassle was that my attempts at tourism were always getting interrupted with endless small glasses of tea and sometimes being taken to meet the cousin who had never even seen such an exotic creature as an American. It's just added bonus tourism, seeing barber shops and luggage stores and women's shoe stores and other places I wouldn't have seen otherwise.

We checked a few of the low-end hotels along Al-Maari between the bus station and Bab al-Faraj. Apparently the Russian prostitutes had the same issue of Lonely Planet, as most of those places were brothels.

We continued down Al-Maari to the clock tower. Facing the clock tower, as seen in the picture below, a Russian / Armenian bazaar district is ahead and to your right. Continue the direction the street sweeper is traveling, past the classic American 1950s car and the red truck, and into the roofed-over street beyond.

Another American classic car passes the clock tower on Al-Maari street near the Russian and Armenian bazaar.

Entrance to the Hotel Najem Akhdar, under the yellow sign.

Signs for: Sawas clothing store, Универмаг Афамя, or Univermag Afamya, and Hotel Nejm Ilahdar. They're stacked in the opposite order in the building.

As for a place to stay in Aleppo, the Hotel Najem Akhdar, also known as the Hotel Nejm Ilahdar, can't be beat. 400 S£ (US$ 10) for a double with sink and shower, 250 S£ (US$ 6.25) for a single with sink, shower, and toilet. It's at Hamman Al-Tal (in the Russian / Armenian bazaar), phone +963-21-239157.

Go down the first alleyway to the right of the clock tower. About 30 meters past where it is partially roofed over, turn onto the first real alleyway to your right. About the third doorway on the right (behind the white truck in this picture, these directions have you walking toward the camera viewpoint) opens into a hallway. That leads to a staircase with an Armenian clothing store, the Универмаг Афамя, or Univermag Afamya, on the first floor up. The hotel is above that.

As you see in these signs, there's quite a bit of Russian spoken and written in Aleppo, in addition to Armenian. Many Armenians ended up in Aleppo after the end of the Ottoman Empire, and then the dissolution of the Soviet Union brought more Armenians plus people from many other former Soviet republics. There's more on the languages in the later page on travel logistics.

If the Najem Akhdar is full, they'll direct you to the Hotel el-Sharq. It's a little dodgey, but it may be the only thing available if you show up late in the day. 200 S£ (US$ 5) for a bed in a shared room.

By the way, the usual procedure in Syria is that you must register your passport at the hotel. This will take a while, but you will have some hot sweet tea to sip while doing the paperwork and chatting with the proprietor. Then they will tell you that they must hold onto your passports, "In case the police come". If you tell them that it's OK to wake you if the police come, they let you keep your passport. The police never seem to come to count passports.

Hotel Najem Akhdar business card, stamped where I picked this up at the Al Haramain in Damascus. See the map on the reverse side.

Hotel al-Sharq. Yes, it's adjacent to the Фабрика Готовой Одежды, the Ready-to-Go Clothing Factory.

A view across Aleppo from my room at the Hotel Najem Akhdar. The Citadel is off to the right, the Hotel Baron is nearby to the left.

Aleppo Sights and History

It wasn't too far from our hotel in the Armenian bazaar to Baron Street, and then the Hotel Baron. It's a famous and historic place from the early 1900s. Before World War II, the guests were mostly British (archaeologists, writers, and spies) and Germans (generals and railway engineers).

Agatha Christie stayed there, her novel Murder on the Orient Express opens at the hotel. Lawrence of Arabia, David Rockefeller, and many others also stayed at the Baron.

The Baron is an interesting place to look around. Sit in the overstuffed old leather chairs in the cool bar with its shuttered windows. Take in the W. Somerset Maugham atmosphere, and sip your gin as the Empire falls. Ottoman, British, French, whichever Empire you care to reference.

Back in those days Aleppo was the eastern end of the Orient Express. This was the real Orient Express and not these luxury special trains irrelevantly labeled as such. For the full run you would leave London for Dover on a train, where you would cross the English Channel on a ferry. At Calais, on the far northern coast of France, you would board a train made up of sleeper cars. From there it was southeast across Europe and down the Balkan peninsula to İstanbul. Then across the Bosphorus by ferry, and into another train to cross Turkey to Antakya, and across the Syrian border to end at Aleppo.

Agatha Christie's book starts in Aleppo and follows some of the reverse route, the main part of the story taking place between İstanbul and somewhere in today's Serbia.

For the best meals I've had in the Middle East, and maybe the best meals I've ever had on the road, go to the Al-Andalib restaurant in Aleppo. It's on the rooftop at the south-east corner of the intersection just north of the Baron Hotel on Baron Street.

The great al-Andalib rooftop restaurant.

Syrian cooking tends to be very good, and the Al-Andalib is outstanding even beyond Syrian high standards. Just go hungry, as the dinners are huge. The fixed meal one evening started with a large array of meze, or appetizers, which could have been a large meal by itself. This was thin unleavened bread cut into wedges, with:

• Tahini, or sesame-seed paste.
• Hummus, or chickpea paste with tahini.
• Mtabel, a.k.a. baba ghanouj, an eggplant paste with tahini.
• Yoghurt with cucumber slices.
• Hot peppers.
• Diced cucumber and tomato salad.
• Olives.

After all that, a double chicken kebap each!

This was accompanied by Al-Chark beer, our first introduction to this somewhat mysterious Syrian beverage. It's all named The East, variously spelled al-Chark or al-Shark or al-Sharq, but the labels are always completely different.

If you buy several of the 330 ml bottles at a time for a group, you will notice that no two hold exactly the same amount. The bottles are a mix of clear and brown glass. Maybe 25% of them have labels, and those label designs vary widely.

And what's up with the "11.5%" and "12%" marking? It certainly isn't alcohol content, which is probably 4% to 5%. The mysteries of "The East"... It seems like the product of a loose consortium of home brewers.

What? Beer in the Middle East? Sure. This isn't Saudi Arabia. And 30% or more of the population of Aleppo is Christian.

Arched passageway in the Aleppo bazaars.

Another Aleppo suq passageway. This is a scan of a postcard.

Aleppo has the best bazaars of the Middle East, in my opinion. Bazaar, or in Arabic, suq, souk, however you want to spell it.

They're better than either İstanbul or Cairo for that Indiana Jones feeling.

Aleppo has been a major trading center since before history started being written down, and its souqs are really something. A large district at the heart of the old city is a maze of narrow alleyways and aisles between ancient buildings. Over the centuries they put out awnings, then connected the awnings, then built archways, until today the buildings are all interconnected and the alleyways are all covered with arched stonework. It's above ground, but you feel like you're in a basement maze.

There are people on donkeys, bicycles, mopeds, ancient motorcycles with sidecars, 3-wheeled bikes pulling trailers, and tiny mini-trucks, all weaving through the crowds walking down the narrow passageways. There are women in western dress, women with tattooed faces, women with scarves and veils covering the lower half of their face, and Saudi-style women draped entirely in black so you can't tell which way they're facing if they don't move. Men similarly range from western business suits to robes with kafiyyeh and 'aghileh, the checkered head cloth and black cord. There are dark, lean Bedouins, and redheads that show the remnants of Crusader and French genes.

Clusters of stands and shops specialize in carpets, bolts of cloth, silk scarves, sheep entrails, plumbing fixtures, soap and toothpaste, rope and string, brooms and mops, sponges, and so on. I had thought that the market districts in İstanbul were really something, but the Aleppo souk made that look tame and westernized.

We didn't need any spool of wire or goat skins or light bulbs, but we did buy some of the great custom fruit juice. You find fruit juice stands all through Syria, with a jumble of string bags of fruit hanging from the ceiling and all around the doorway. You can get the default mix, or specify your own. Oranges, grapefruit, bananas, apples, carrots, mangos, etc., whatever you want is sliced up and put into the blender. That is mixed with ice shaved from a large block, and the concoction is poured into a large glass mug.

In the silk traders' bazaar in Aleppo.

Jami' Bani Omayya al-Kabir, or Mosque of Zachariah or Jami'a Zakarihheh. This is a scan of a postcard. They used a fisheye lens, the tower isn't really tilted!

Another very interesting sight is the Great Mosque of Aleppo, or the Jāmi' Bani Omayya al-Kabīr, founded around 715 AD by the Umayyad caliph Walid I, built on a pre-existing Christian church, itself probably built on an even earlier religious temple.

The mosque contains a tomb said to be of Zachariah, the father of John the Baptist, and so it also gets called Jami'a Zakarihheh or Mosque of Zachariah. As we'll see even more in Damascus, the figures of Christianity are also highly respected figures of Islam. The short version of Zachariah's story is:

Zachariah and his wife are old and childless. The angel Gabriel tells Zachariah that they will have a child.
"Yeah, right" says Zachariah.
"I'll show you," says Gabriel. "You're now unable to speak. You won't be able to speak again until Elizabeth has the kid and names him 'John'."

Lesson: If angels tell you absurd things, just nod and accept it.

The main entrance of the medieval Citadel. Scan of a postcard.

Me at Aleppo's medieval Citadel. The Citadel structures seen here date from the 1200s, although the site has been used for 5000 years.