28 AusTRAlIAN QuARTeRlY OCT–DEC 2017
ThE LOST CITy: hOMAGE TO ALEPPOiMAGEs: © Mil.ru - WikiAleppo’s vitality was due to a combination of
diversity, tolerance and affluence.
ride to Aleppo they shot dead an ‘Arab
sheik’ who was riding ‘a most beautiful
Arab mare ... a pure-bred Mare of the
Prophet.’ Chauvel hoped to smuggle
her back to Australia and so his aides
tried to disguise her, dying her with
Condy’s crystals and replacing her ‘silver
Arab slippers’ with ‘heavy army shoes.’
This caused the mare to go lame and
she had to be left behind, to Chauvel’s
eternal regret.^9
The Australians went on to hunt
Turkish leader Mustafa Kemal out of
his last Syrian bastion: a top-floor suite
in Aleppo’s famous Baron Hotel, the
‘unique hôtel de Première classe à Alep,’
patronised by celebrities like Agatha
Christie (Hercule Poirot left from Aleppo
on the orient Express), lawrence of
Arabia (his unpaid bar bill was later on
display) and Egypt’s President Nasser.^10
The Armenian owners were non-
partisan: German generals treated their
Turkish allies to banquets here.
In WW2 Australian troops again
briefly occupied Aleppo. At the time
of the Armistice in 1941 ‘the army
occupying most of Syria was primarily
Australian, led by an Australian General
[l t- General John lavarack].’^11 The Free
French forces tried and failed to reclaim
the country for France, and so in an
indirect way Australia played a role in
the winning of Syrian independence in
1946.
It’s also worth a mention that the
state of New South Wales has nowelected a Premier from an Aleppan
family. Gladys Berejiklian’s mother is
from Aleppo; her grandparents had
been orphaned in the Armenian
genocide of 1915, and found refuge
in Aleppo, where the large and pros-
perous Armenian community sheltered
thousands. Her father is from Jerusalem;
Gladys did not speak English until she
attended primary school in Sydney.^12 As
Premier, she is competent, unassuming
and widely respected.
Aleppo’s vitality was due to a
combination of diversity, tolerance
and affluence. An English merchant
commented in 1586 that ‘... hither
resort Jewes, Tartarians, Persians,
Armenians, Egyptians, Indians and many
sorts of Christians, and enjoy freedom
of their consciences and bring thither
many kinds of rich merchandises.’^13 This
at a time when freedom of religion was
unknown in most European cities.
A 17th century French diplomat
described Aleppans as ‘the gentlest,
the least kenniving, and the most
accommodating in this vast Empire.’^14
A century later a Scottish doctor, who
practised in Aleppo for fifteen years
(1740-1754), wrote that although
Aleppans might argue and quarrel
they seldom came to blows: ‘none are
less guilty of fighting...in many years
you may perhaps never see one blow
struck.’^15
over sixty years later an English
traveller wrote that ‘Aleppo was by far