or HALEM, the metropolis of Syria, is built on eight small hills or eminences, on the highest of which the castle is erected, and is now generally agreed to be the ancient Beraza. This mount is of a conic form, and seems in a great measure to be raised with the earth thrown up out of a deep broad ditch which surrounds it. The suburbs to the north-north-east are next in height to this, and those to the west-south-west are much lower than the parts adjacent and than any other part of the city. It is encompassed by an old wall considerably decayed, and by a broad ditch now in most places turned into gardens. It is about three miles and a half in circumference, but the suburbs eight.

The mosques in Aleppo are numerous, and some few of them magnificent. Before each of them is an area, with a fountain in the middle, designed for ablutions before prayers; and behind some of the larger there are little gardens. There are many large khans, or caravanserais, consisting of a capacious square, on all sides of which are a number of rooms, built on a ground-floor, used occasionally for chambers, ware-houses, or stables. Above stairs there is a colonnade or gallery on every side, in which are the doors of a number of small rooms, wherein the merchants, as well strangers as natives, transact most of their business. The streets are narrow; but well paved, and kept very clean.

The bazaars or market-places are long covered narrow streets, on each side of which are a great number of small shops, just sufficient to hold the tradesman and his goods, the buyer being obliged to stand without. Each separate branch of business has a particular bazaar, which is locked up, as well as the streets, an hour and a half after sun-set: but the locks are of wood, though the doors are fitted with iron. The slaughter-houses are in the suburbs, open to the fields. The tanners have a khan to work in near the river. To the southward in the suburbs they burn lime, and a little beyond that there is a village where they make ropes and catgut. On the opposite side of the river, to the westward, there is a glass-house, where they make a coarse white glass, in the winter only, for the greatest part of this manufacture is brought from a village thirty-five miles westward.

The city is supplied with good water from springs, near the banks of the river Heylen, about five miles to the north-east, which is conveyed from thence by an aqueduct, and distributed all over the town by earthen pipes. This is sufficient for drinking, cookery, &c. but the fountains are supplied by wells of brackish water, of which there is one in every house. Their fuel is wood and charcoal in the house; but they heat their bathhouses with the dung of animals, leaves of plants, parings of fruit, and the like.

The inhabitants of Aleppo, though of different religions, seem to be much the same sort of people. The number of souls in the city and suburbs is computed at about 235,000, of whom 200,000 are Turks, 30,000 Christians, and 5000 Jews. Of the Christians the greater number are Greeks, next to them the Armenians, then the Syrians, and lastly the Maronites; each of whom have a church in the city called Suddida, in which quarter, and the parts adjacent, most of them reside. The common language is the vulgar Arabic, but the Turks of condition use the Turkish. Most of the Armenians can speak the Armenian, some few Syrians understand Syriac, and many of the Jews Hebrew; but scarce one of the Greeks understand a word of Greek: however, in their manners, they all are much alike. Aleppo is 70 miles east of Scanderoon, on the sea-coast, and 175 north-west of Damascus. E. long. 37. 40. N. lat. 36. 12.