BORDERS: DESTRUCTION Aleppo

Aleppo is one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world; it has been inhabited since perhaps as early as the 6th millennium BC. Excavations at Tell as-Sawda and Tell al-Ansari, just south of the old city of Aleppo, show that the area was occupied since at least the latter part of the 3rd millennium BC; and this is also when Aleppo is first mentioned in cuneiform tablets unearthed in Ebla and Mesopotamia, in which it is noted for its commercial and military proficiency. Such a long history is probably due to its being a strategic trading point midway between the Mediterranean Sea and Mesopotamia.

THE WAR

The Battle of Aleppo is an ongoing military confrontation in Aleppo, Syria between the Free Syrian Army and its allies and the Syrian military. The battle began on 19 July 2012 as a part of the Syrian civil war. Clashes escalated in late July as the Syrian Army and opposition fighters fought in the city, which is the largest in Syria and holds great strategic and economic importance. The scale and importance of the combat has led to combatants calling it "the mother of all battles".




THE DESTRUCTION OF CULTURAL HERITAGE

The site of the Great Mosque once was the former Agora from the Hellenistic period, which later became the garden for the Cathedral of Saint Helena, during the Christian era rule of Syria.

The mosque, begun about 715, was built on confiscated land that was the Cathedral cemetery. The construction of the earliest mosque on the site was commenced by the Ummayad caliph al-Walid I in 715 and was finished by his successor Sulayman ibn Abd al-Malik in 717.


January 2013
In the second half of the 11th century, the Mirdasids controlled Aleppo and built a single-domed fountain in mosque's courtyard. The detached 45-meter high minaret of the Great Mosque was restored by the Abul Hasan Muhammad of the Seljuks in 1090. The mosque was restored and expanded by the Zengid sultan Nur al-Din in 1169 after a great fire that had destroyed the earlier Ummayad structure; Later,the Mamluks made further alterations. Carved Kufic inscriptions decorate the entire minaret along with alternate with bands of stylized ornaments in patterns and muqarnas.

In 1260, the entire mosque was razed by the Mongols. The courtyard and minaret of the mosque were renovated in 2003.

Over the weekend of 13 October 2012, the mosque was seriously damaged during clashes between the armed groups of the Free Syrian Army and the Syrian Army forces.


* THE IMAGE
The central image of the picture is the Grate Mosque. Behind, a picture of the destruction of the city of Aleppo and the picture of a foreign person who has to confront himself with killed people at his feets and the destruction around him.
The poem: REYERTA
By Federico García Lorca
En la mitad del barranco
las navajas de Albacete,
bellas de sangre contraria,
relucen como los peces.
Una dura luz de naipe
recorta en el agrio verde,
caballos enfurecidos
y perfiles de jinetes.
En la copa de un olivo
lloran dos viejas mujeres.
El toro de la reyerta
se sube por las paredes.
Ángeles negros traían
pañuelos y agua de nieve.
Ángeles con grandes alas
de navajas de Albacete.
Juan Antonio el de Montilla
rueda muerto la pendiente,
su cuerpo lleno de lirios
y una granada en las sienes.
Ahora monta cruz de fuego,
carretera de la muerte.

BORDERS