Aleppo

Who holds it

Name

al-Malik al-Zahir Ghazi

Title

Prince of Aleppo

Since

1186

Confidence

high

Lord in 1200

Al-Zahir Ghazi rules from the citadel. The chief qadi is Baha al-Din ibn Shaddad. The governor of the city, the commander of the citadel while the prince is away, and the market inspector that winter are not named in the sources at hand.

How things stand that morning

Held by al-Zahir's deputies on 1 January 1200 while he and the army are away in the south; no threat to the city that winter.

Charter

No charter: Muslim towns of Ayyubid Syria had no communal charters. The prince's governor, the qadi and the market inspector (muhtasib) govern, and the notables (a'yan) speak for the townsmen.

Council

No council. The notables (a'yan), the heads of the scholarly families, the qadi and in Zengid times a headman (ra'is) of the town spoke for the citizens; whether a ra'is still acts under al-Zahir is not pinned.

Communities

Sunni Muslims of the Shafi'i and Hanafi schools, with old scholarly families; a large Twelver Shi'i community; Turkmen, among them the Yaruqi Turkmen of Dildirim's family; Kurds and Turks of the garrison; Syriac Orthodox (Jacobite), Melkite and Armenian Christians; a Jewish community, among whom lived Joseph ben Judah, Maimonides' pupil and the addressee of his Guide, a physician at al-Zahir's court (his years in Aleppo are not pinned here). Venice's first recorded privilege at Aleppo comes later (1207-1208).

Fairs and markets

No fairs in the Latin sense; trade runs through the daily markets (suqs) and the caravan seasons. No market days are recorded for 1200.

Militia

The Zengid-era town militia (ahdath) under the ra'is had faded; defence rests on the prince's mamluks and the citadel garrison.

Walls and castle

The citadel on its great mound, its moat deepened and linked to canals and its slope faced with stone by al-Zahir, with the stone bridge to the gate; the palace, arsenal, granaries and cisterns within (the dated entrance block of 1213 is later). The town walls with their gates, which al-Zahir extended round the southern and eastern suburbs, putting the citadel at the centre of the defences. The Great Mosque rebuilt by Nur al-Din after the fire of 1169, with its eleventh-century minaret.

Trade and crafts

The caravan crossroads of northern Syria: Iraq and the Jazira by Manbij and the Euphrates crossings, Anatolia by Ain Tab, the Mediterranean by Antioch and Latakia. Suqs and caravanserais round the Great Mosque; cotton and cloth, grain and fruit of the plain, salt from the Jabbul marsh; the Aleppo mint. Tolls on the roads and the markets.

Where the sources disagree

Evidence: The city is thick in the sources; its officers in 1200 are not pinned here.

Primary sources for Aleppo

Chronicles, registers, sagas and inscriptions written in or near 1200 that cover this entry. Each has its own page with editions, translations and where to read it.

• The Book of the Two Gardens, on the Reigns of Nur al-Din and Saladin, and its Sequel, Abu Shama (Shihab al-Din Abd al-Rahman al-Maqdisi) (about 1240 to 1267, at Damascus). The Rawdatayn ends with Saladin's death in 1193 and matters for 1200 as the store of Imad al-Din al-Isfahani's lost al-Barq al-Shami and of al-Qadi al-Fadil's letters, quoted at length, which describe the Ayyubid princes, the Jazira and the frontier a few years earlier. Read online
• The Complete History, Izz al-Din Ibn al-Athir (about 1200 to 1231, at Mosul). The widest Muslim narrative for the years 596 to 597 AH (1199 to 1201): al-Adil's entry into Cairo and his taking of the sultanate from his nephew al-Mansur Muhammad early in 1200, the quarrels of the Ayyubid princes at Damascus, Aleppo and Hama, the Nile failure and the great famine of Egypt, Mosul under Nur al-Din Arslan Shah and the Jazira under Gokbori and the Artuqids, Baghdad under the caliph al-Nasir, the Khwarazmshah Tekish's death in 1200 and Muhammad's accession, the Ghurid wars in Khurasan, the Eldiguzids and Georgia, the Almohads in the west, and the Seljuks of Rum in passing. Read online
• The Cream of the History of Aleppo, Kamal al-Din Ibn al-Adim (about 1240 to 1260). The annals of Aleppo. Read online
• The Dispeller of Anxieties, on the History of the Ayyubids, Jamal al-Din Ibn Wasil (about 1272 to 1285, at Hama). The fullest Ayyubid dynastic history, written at Hama with access to the family's own tradition and to Ibn al-Athir, Ibn Abi Tayy and Sibt ibn al-Jawzi. Read online
• The Mirror of Time, on the History of Notables, Sibt ibn al-Jawzi (Shams al-Din Yusuf) (about 1240 to 1256, at Damascus). A Damascene preacher's year-by-year chronicle with obituaries, written by a grandson of the Baghdad scholar Ibn al-Jawzi, so it carries both the Baghdad view (the caliph al-Nasir and his court) and the Damascus view (al-Adil's court, the famine refugees of 1200, prices, the plague of 1201). Read online
• The Anonymous Syriac Chronicle to 1234, Anonymous (a Syrian Orthodox writer, probably of Edessa) (about 1234 to 1240). An Edessene chronicle independent of Michael the Syrian in its later part, with a secular section reaching 1234 that gives the Jazira, Edessa, Harran, Mardin and Melitene about 1200 under al-Adil's sons and the Artuqids, the Seljuks of Rum, the Armenians of Cilicia and the Franks of Antioch, and a church section to 1207 on the Jacobite succession after Michael's death in 1199. Read online
• The Chronicle of Michael the Syrian (Michael the Great), Michael the Syrian, patriarch of Antioch 1166 to 1199 (about 1180 to 1195). The Jacobite patriarch's world chronicle, in parallel columns of church, secular and miscellaneous events, ending four years before 1200 and shortly before his own death on 7 November 1199, which left the Syrian Orthodox church with a disputed succession in 1200. Read online
• The Chronicle of Smbat Sparapet (Sempad the Constable), Smbat Sparapet, brother of King Hetum I of Cilicia (about 1270 to 1276). The Cilician court chronicle, drawing on Matthew of Edessa for its early part and on family memory later. Read online

6 more in the sources library for The Latin East and the Ayyubids.