1. Medieval
Aleppo (Ar. Ḥalab) is a city in northwestern Syria. Jews first settled there in the Hellenistic period. Between the Arab and Ottoman conquests, i.e., from the seventh to the sixteenth century, the Aleppine Jewish community maintained loose ties with the gaonic centers in Palestine and Babylonia, and elected its own religious and lay leaders.
In Jewish tradition, Aleppo is identified as Aram Ṣova (Aram-Zobah), a city conquered in the days of King David (II Samuel 10:6 ff.). The Al-Ṣafra synagogue in Aleppo, said …