Every morning, they come to greet each other. After sweeping the cobblestone dust, they established some plastic chairs in a semicircle and talk while counting their prayer accounts. Their deep voices resonate under the blackened arches by the flames. “We are up to date to chat, that’s all! To greet. As for the rest, look around, everything is dead, trade is dead. The war and Assad’s regime destroyed everything. Aleeppo is asleep,” said Mohammed Imad Eddine in early March. His family had a fabric post here for more than a hundred years.
The ritual is the same every day. The last merchants of Alepos Old Souk meet in the deserted halls of what was once the pride of Syria’s economic capital. “We used to sell aleepan fabrics to a client from all over the world, from Iraq, Azerbaijan, Jordan and the Gulf business was good. Day and night, we prepared goods for the next day. We all sold,” has life.
Located at the foot of the citadel of Aleppo, this vaulted labyrinth, which extended for 12 kilometers, housed more than 4,000 stores and about fifty caravanserais, some dating from 300 BC. Duration The Ottoman Era, Aleppo’s market was one of the largest in the world. The perfumes, spices, precious stones, silk and cotton were exchanged here, goods brought by caravans from India, Iran or the Arabian peninsula, which went to Venice or Rome through the Mediterranean.
Today, customers no longer venture in the Souk. And even if they did, most mercens no longer have a store to welcome them. Many were burned in the fire of September 2012 that devastated the old medieval city, a scene of violent clashes between the Syrian army and the rebels. “It was our heart that was burning. We could say a piece of cloth, not a single merchandise. We never knew what side the fire caused,” said Mohammed Imad Eddine in his old office, destroyed by a missile.
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