Skift Take
Along with the lives it takes, war destroys culuture and history. In the case of Syria, in can wipe a few millennia's worth of tradition of the map in one deadly shelling.
A few miles from Aleppo are the hills where human beings first domesticated wild grasses. All the wheat we eat originates from those plants and the first farmers. Once those hunter gatherers settled, they set in motion developments that led to towns and then markets. Aleppo was one such place and its souk lay on the first great trade routes, becoming part of an economic engine that made astonishing new products available to more and more people. The warehouses filled up with soaps, silks, spices, precious metals, ceramics and textiles, especially the colourful and diaphanous type favoured by harem-dwellers. Eventually all this mercantile activity focussed into one particular area and a fabulous bazaar was built, mostly in the Ottoman heyday of the 15th and 16th centuries. It was a honeycomb of surprises and flavours, a tribute to the best aspects of human society, but now it has run smack into the opposite tendency: war.
[caption id="attachment_27245" align="aligncenter" width="700"] Aleppo, Syria's now-destroyed historic souk. Photo by seier+seier[/caption]
Of course, the human suffering is far more important and pressing, but I also mourn the loss of a place that so effortlessly encapsulated everything that was light, vivacious, sociable and friendly, everything that war is not. Architecturally the bazaar was not unique. What it had was tradition, heritage and incredible diversity. Five hundred years after Shakespeare made A
