The Armenians of Aleppo

The Armenians have been present in Aleppo since ancient times and their presence dates back hundreds of years. The exact date of their arrival in Aleppo is not known. The oldest mention of their presence dates back seven hundred years on an Armenian manuscript margin that stated that it was copied in 1329 AD in Aleppo in the Church of Mary in the Saliba neighborhood, which is an Armenian church that still exists today.

The Armenians in Aleppo formed an important industrial, commercial and scientific force. They include merchants and industrialists, the most famous of whom are the Skias family, doctors, the most important of whom is Dr. Asadour Altonian, owner of the famous Altonian Hospital, and Dr. Awadis Jebehjian, lawyers, including lawyer Toros Shadervian and Iskandar Elian, and pharmacists, the most famous of whom are the pharmacist Iskandar Bayramian, Gabriel Khanjan and Misak Keshishian.

In 1898, the Ottoman Statistical Yearbook estimated the Armenian population in Aleppo at around four thousand five hundred Armenians. 

During World War I in 1915, Armenian immigrants from different areas of Cilicia north of Aleppo arrived in Aleppo in preparation for their transfer by the men of the Ottoman Empire to Deir ez-Zor and the Syrian Jazira.

Many of them died of hunger, cold and disease during their months-long walk on foot, barefoot and naked, until they reached the areas of Deir ez-Zor, Maskanah and Al-Shaddadeh. Most of the immigrants were women and children.

Some Armenian immigrants were able to stay in Aleppo, hiding from the eyes of the Ottoman authorities. The people of Aleppo embraced them and extended a helping hand to them and married their women as legal wives and took care of the children of the Armenians and considered them as their own children. The Armenians in their literature acknowledge the kindness and hospitality that the people of Aleppo offered to their displaced Armenian brothers.

The Armenians did not build any neighborhood of their own during that period, contrary to what some researchers from Aleppo mention, as they were under threat from the Ottoman authorities and could not appear in public.

When the First World War ended and the Ottoman Empire fell, French soldiers entered Cilicia, so the Armenians rushed out of their hiding places during the period of displacement and returned to their country.

But when the Turks agreed with the French in 1921 AD that the French would withdraw from Cilicia in exchange for the Turks stopping their support for the revolutionaries in Syria, the Armenians feared being persecuted, so they returned with a new migration from Cilicia to Syria, and some of them migrated to Lebanon.

Aleppo’s share of displaced Armenians was estimated by some historians at about sixty thousand people, and the total population of Aleppo in 1921 was about two hundred thousand people, so the population of Aleppo increased by a quarter of the refugees in that year.

In 1922, the Armenians built their first camps in the Ram area located in the area currently called the Sulaymaniyah traffic lights.

These refugees were able to build simple schools of their own and a small church in the Al-Barakat area in the Sulaymaniyah neighborhood, which was called the Church of the Holy Cross. They were able to work and establish primitive craft workshops and were known for their precision and honesty in work.

The city’s residents tell about the Armenians in Aleppo that they refused to receive alms of money, clothing and food and insisted on receiving them in exchange for the work they performed.

The Armenians in Aleppo integrated into the Aleppan society and became a major part of its population. They were famous in the field of precise industrial work. They were able to build entire neighborhoods in the city instead of their wooden barracks in a relatively short time.

Aleppo, even before the current events in Syria, had one of the largest Christian communities in the Middle East. Aleppo is home to many Eastern Christians, with 250,000 Christians before the crisis, making up 12% of the total population. A large number of Christians (other than Armenians) speak Armenian, and they are mostly Christians from Urfa in Turkey.

In terms of numbers, there are no complete statistics on the number of Armenians in this city today. However, according to community estimates before 2011, there were about 60,000 Armenians living in Aleppo, most of whom are descendants of those who came to the city at the beginning of the last century.

Today, most Armenians in Aleppo belong to the Armenian Apostolic Church, followed by Armenian Catholics and thirdly, Armenian Protestants.