Chapter 1, Part 2: Aleppo Through History, Its Poets, Its Schools and al-Kawakibi

The events of history tell us that Aleppo was always one of the frontier strongholds of Islam and Arabism, and that it tasted the bitterness of destruction, slaughter and displacement many times over.

Abu Ubayda ibn al-Jarrah, may God be pleased with him, took it by treaty during the caliphate of the Commander of the Faithful Umar ibn al-Khattab, may God's good pleasure be upon him, in the sixteenth year of the Hijra. With him were Khalid ibn al-Walid, Maysara ibn Masruq al-Absi and Iyad ibn Ghanm.

It is related that Iyad made peace with its people, guaranteeing their persons, their children, their city wall, their churches, their homes and the citadel within it, and excepting only the site of the mosque. Abu Ubayda confirmed his treaty. It is also related that its people left it for Antioch when the Muslim army besieged it.

From Antioch they wrote to Abu Ubayda and made peace with him, and after that they returned to their city.[1]

This valiant and long-suffering city was put through the harshest trials of aggression, and it resisted everyone who attacked its Arab and Islamic character with the blood of its sons, which it always gave without asking for thanks and without bargaining.

The worst it suffered was what Nikephoros, king of the Byzantines, did to it when he besieged it in the month of Dhu al-Hijja in the year 351 AH and Sayf al-Dawla fled the city. Nikephoros took it and killed everyone in it.[2]

After that the Mongol armies under Hulagu attacked it, took it and entered it after fierce battles, laying it waste and killing and scattering its people without mercy (in 658 AH / 1260 AD).

Damascus "escaped destruction thanks to the mediation of its notables".[3] Damascus has always been of a yielding temper and better able to adapt, and so it knows how to bend with the events of history.

Aleppo remained in ruins for a quarter of a century, but it began to come back to life. "From that time on, Aleppo became the military command center for the defense of the Syro-Egyptian empire, against the Crusaders who ruled Antioch and then against the invaders coming from the east (the Mongols) and from Cilicia.. Aleppo thus became the second Islamic frontier stronghold after Constantinople and Izmir."[4]

Many poets, old and modern, have praised Aleppo.

Abu Ubada al-Buhturi said of it:

"In it Alwa has a summer home and a spring pasture,
In Banqusa, Babilla and Batyas.

O Alwa, had you wished, you would have given us union for estrangement,
And your hard heart would have softened toward a lover.

Is there a way for me to al-Zahran from Aleppo,
And to rapture among those roses and myrtles?"

And al-Mutanabbi said:

"Whenever the meadows bid us welcome, we said:
Aleppo is our goal, and you are only the road.

In you is pasture for our horses and our camels,
And toward her our quick pace and our long stride."

And Kushajim said:

"The hand of the rain has shown you its work,
And the earth has revealed its secrets.

In its Kanun (winter) it had stored away
A hidden treasure, and gave it to its Adhar (spring).

The eye falls on nothing but
Gardens sorting their blossoms into kinds.

The east breeze opens in them
Their fruits, and tears away their veils.

It sheds in them the blood of the anemones
As it goes on deflowering their virgin buds.

It draws them one toward another
As lovers clasp their visitors.

Before its narcissus eyes are lowered,
And at times its gaze stares wide.

When a raincloud pours its water
On any spot, it lights that spot's fire.

No city has ever delighted its neighbor
As Aleppo has delighted hers.

She is paradise, gathering all that you desire,
So visit her, and blessed is the one who visits her."

And al-Sanawbari said of it:

"May a cloud that sheds its tears water Aleppo,
Slow to stop its flow once it has begun.

Its open spaces, carpeted with gardens,
And its squares, with pools between them.

You see the wind weave from its water
Coats of double mail, or a net.

As if glass had been melted over them,
And molten silver poured upon them.

The flowers are strung like the stars,
Some scattered, some closely clustered.

As the passing east breeze ripples the water,
So the streaks of cloud have patterned the face of the sky."[5]

And al-Akhtal al-Saghir, one of the modern poets of Lebanon, said of it:

"You have cut yourself off from glory, grace and letters,
Though you were made for them, if you have not visited Aleppo."

And the Egyptian poet Hassan Ismail recited a poem about it at the al-Kawakibi festival in 1959, which opens:

"The autumn of life has come walking toward me;
Stretch out your right hand with inspiration, O Aleppo."

We have no accurate census today of the population of Aleppo at the beginning of the twentieth century, the year in which Rushdi al-Kikhya was born. But we can draw on the census made by Dr. Abd al-Rahman Hamida, which is also an approximate count. He states that the people of the city of Aleppo numbered about 127,000 in 1890, and that by 1922 they had reached about 156,000, among them 6,580 Jews, 50,000 Christians and 2,650 foreigners, with the Muslims numbering 98,000.[6]

At that time Aleppo, like the other Ottoman lands, lay under a state of cultural backwardness that was encouraged by the highest authorities, so that citizens would not know the truth of the progress the outside world had made in every field. That is the nature of one-man regimes.

Even so, Aleppo was luckier than other places. Foreign schools of a Christian religious character were founded there, such as the schools set up by the Franciscan Brothers and the Terra Santa school founded by the Italian community. The city also had many Islamic schools in which Islamic jurisprudence was taught according to the four Sunni schools of law, along with grammar and the rules of the Arabic language.. The variety of its schools may have been what led the French poet Lamartine, who visited Aleppo, to call it "the Athens of Asia".

It should be noted that the foreign and Christian schools also opened their doors to the children of Muslims. But the number of these in such schools was very small, because of their high fees, which only wealthy families could afford, and because of the Muslims' aversion to their missionary character. So families of the common people sent their children to the "kuttabs", which were found in every quarter of the city and were held in small mosques, or in the house of the sheikh or of the "khoja", the woman who taught little girls.

Yet if cultural life in Aleppo suffered from the same ills as the rest of the Islamic world, at the very time when Japan was beginning to send its scientific missions to the advanced universities of Europe and America, the people of Aleppo were skilled merchants and famous craftsmen and manufacturers.

The goods of the world passed through their city to the East, and the goods of the East came back through it on their way to the West. They generally enjoyed a good standard of living, thanks to the wide extent of their vast farmland and lush orchards, which added to their material ease and wrapped a green belt around the shoulders of the city that gladdened the soul.. The people of Aleppo were lovers of music and of listening (sama'). They used to attend musical gatherings in these beautiful orchards after the dawn prayer.. or in the music cafés at night all year round.

I was once told that one of the great Egyptian musicians used to say:

If a singer passes the Aleppo test, his success in the art is assured.. And when the composer Mohammed Abdel Wahab wanted to study the Andalusian muwashshahat and the Aleppine qudud, he came to Aleppo and learned from the explanations of Sheikh Umar al-Batsh.

When a pupil finished his studies at the state primary school, he went on to the "Maktab Sultani", the only secondary school for boys in Aleppo. The girls went to the "Dar al-Mu'allimat", the name of the secondary school where they studied, and it too was the only one.. But there were many schools of religious learning.. One of them, and the most famous, was the "Khusrawiyya" school founded by the Turkish governor Khusraw Pasha, from which our friend Dr. Maarouf al-Dawalibi graduated, one of the leading founders of the People's Party and a graduate of the Sorbonne.

From a similar school, the Kawakibiyya, graduated Sheikh Abd al-Rahman al-Kawakibi, who rose up against the injustice of the Ottoman Sultanate, fought it and wrote several books attacking one-man rule and calling for an Islamic union that would bring the scattered Muslims together. He progressed in his studies from the "school" of his maternal aunt, who was skilled in writing, reading and calligraphy.. to a private school where one of the teachers was his mother's uncle.. to the Kawakibiyya school, where his father was director and a teacher, and he took from its teachers all the learning he could, and read the Istanbul newspapers that reached Aleppo without fail.[7]

More than anything else, al-Kawakibi called for the reform of religion. He wanted Islam to be freed from rigidity and superstition.. and freed from empty rituals that do nothing to purify the soul, because they lack the element of sincerity.. Divine decree and predestination, in his view, were man's own effort and work.. He disliked rigidity in religion.. and called for the door of ijtihad (independent reasoning) to be opened, because Muslims in every generation have the right to renew their views as if they themselves were the first Muslims.. And he called for the education of women, to free them from the grip of ignorance.

His star shone in his deep works, especially "Umm al-Qura" and "Taba'i' al-Istibdad" (The Nature of Despotism). Among the finest of his views:

"The worst degree of despotism, from which one seeks refuge in God as from Satan, is the government of an absolute individual who inherits the throne, commands the army and holds religious authority."

"And the despotism of ignorance over knowledge, and the despotism of the self over reason."

"It is in the nature of despotism that the rich are its enemies in thought and its pegs in practice. They are the despot's tether: he humiliates them and they groan, he milks them and they bow. That is why humiliation takes root in nations where the rich are many. The poor, the despot fears as a ewe fears the wolves."

He died, may God have mercy on him, a homeless exile in Egypt, and his Egyptian friends engraved on his grave two lines in which Hafez Ibrahim mourned him:

"Here lies the man of this world, here the place where piety came down,
Here the best of the wronged, here the best of writers.

Stop, recite the Mother of the Book (al-Fatiha), and greet
Him, for this grave is the grave of al-Kawakibi."

It was from one of these schools that Suleiman al-Halabi set out to continue his studies at al-Azhar. But he devoted one of his journeys to God alone, and plunged his dagger into the chest of the French general Kléber, Napoleon's deputy in Egypt.

Today Aleppo is regarded as an important industrial center. Its silk and cotton textile industry, for which it has been famous for four thousand years, flourishes there, and modern factories of every kind are spread throughout it.

A university was founded there, beginning in 1946 with the Faculty of Engineering. It was attached to Damascus University, then became an independent university during the union in 1960 through the personal and direct intervention of President Gamal Abdel Nasser, and its faculties were completed one after another afterward. In 1998 it had more than thirty-five thousand students, men and women, divided among fourteen faculties, and its teaching staff numbered 1,024 men and 194 women.[8]

Aleppo has regained the freshness of its face since it began to drink the water of the Euphrates, purified with ozone, and to water its countryside and famous orchards with it. Drought had crept into them after the Turks cut off the water of its river, the Queiq, and the sweet water of the Euphrates brought back to it life, greenery, plenty and rich harvests. In this way its landmarks, which have kept company with history since history was a child, were adorned with a splendid robe of green silk that stirs the poet in us, gladdens the hearts of its citizens and puts their minds at rest, and that delights the visitors from the north who come to it for trade and to see its everlasting historic monuments.

Endnotes:

[1] Ibn al-Shihna, Al-Durr al-Muntakhab fi Tarikh Mamlakat Halab, Dar al-Kitab al-Arabi, Damascus 1984, p. 11.

[2] Ibn al-Shihna, op. cit., p. 32.

[3] Dr. Nur al-Din Hatum and Dr. Adel Zaytun, Fi Dhikra Ma'rakat Hittin (On the Anniversary of the Battle of Hattin), Damascus 1987, p. 189.

[4] Jean Sauvaget, cited in Dr. As'ad Talas, Al-Athar al-Islamiyya fi Halab (The Islamic Monuments of Aleppo), p. 7.
Professor Sauvaget was a well-known Orientalist under whom we studied literature at the University of Paris. He wrote a book on Aleppo, received his doctorate in letters in 1941, and died in 1951. His death was a loss to Arabic studies and Islamic archaeology.
It would be good if one of our professors translated this book into Arabic.. given how few modern reference works there are on this city.

[5] From Zahr al-Adab, p. 188.

[6] In his book La Ville d'Alep, published in Paris in 1959, p. 15.

[7] From the book Abd al-Rahman al-Kawakibi, in the series Nawabigh al-Arab (Arab Geniuses), p. 18.

[8] The Statistical Abstract published by the Central Bureau of Statistics for 1998.