Crushed flowers

ALEPPO’S location was always a blessing and a curse. It lay at the fork on the Silk Road where goods went south to Africa and the Middle East or north into Eurasia. Merchants milked the proceeds, helped by carrier pigeons from Baghdad bringing daily updates on shifting commodity prices. But it was also a prize. Empires battled for its wealth.

In the tenth century it shifted from Christian Byzantine to Shia Fatimid to Sunni Abbasid hands, sometimes every few days. Merchants nodded, checked the wind and kept out of the fray. Its location was too important not to overcome earthquakes or sacking by the Mongols or Tamerlane. “It was just about trading,” says Philip Mansel, who this year published a timely book on Aleppo’s rise and fall.