The tradition of the city’s name is curious, and worth relating.  It is called, in Arabic, Haleb el-Shahba—­Aleppo, the Gray—­which most persons suppose to refer to the prevailing color of the soil.  The legend, however, goes much farther. Haleb, which the Venetians and Genoese softened into Aleppo, means literally:  “has milked,” According to Arab tradition, the patriarch Abraham once lived here:  his tent being pitched near the mound now occupied by the citadel.  He had a certain gray cow (el-shahba) which was milked every morning for the benefit of the poor.  When, therefore, it was proclaimed:  “Ibrahim haleb el-shahba” (Abraham has milked the gray cow), all the poor of the tribe came up to receive their share.  The repetition of this morning call attached itself to the spot, and became the name of the city which was afterwards founded.

Aleppo is built on the eastern slope of a shallow upland basin, through which flows the little River Koweik.  There are low hills to the north and south, between which the country falls into a wide, monotonous plain, extending unbroken to the Euphrates.  The city is from eight to ten miles in circuit, and, though not so thickly populated, covers a greater extent of space than Damascus.  The population is estimated at 100,000.  In the excellence (not the elegance) of its architecture, it surpasses any Oriental city I have yet seen.  The houses are all of hewn stone, frequently three and even four stories in height, and built in a most massive and durable style, on account of the frequency of earthquakes.  The streets are well paved, clean, with narrow sidewalks, and less tortuous and intricate than the bewildering alleys of Damascus.  A large part of the town is occupied with bazaars, attesting the splendor of its former commerce.  These establishments are covered with lofty vaults of stone, lighted from the top; and one may walk for miles beneath the spacious roofs.  The shops exhibit all the stuffs of the East, especially of Persia and India.  There is also an extensive display of European fabrics, as the eastern provinces of Asiatic Turkey, as far as Baghdad, are supplied entirely from Aleppo and Trebizond.

Within ten years—­in fact, since the Allied Powers drove Ibrahim Pasha out of Syria—­the trade of Aleppo has increased, at the expense of Damascus.  The tribes of the Desert, who were held in check during the Egyptian occupancy, are now so unruly that much of the commerce between the latter place and Baghdad goes northward to Mosul, and thence by a safer road to this city.  The khans, of which there are a great number, built on a scale according with the former magnificence of Aleppo, are nearly all filled, and Persian, Georgian, and Armenian merchants again make their appearance in the bazaars.  The principal manufactures carried on are the making of shoes (which, indeed, is a prominent branch in every Turkish city), and the weaving of silk and golden tissues.  Two