History
Bab al-Faraj was built by Az-Zahir Ghazi and later renovated by An-Nasir Yusuf.
In 1904 it was torn down with a portion of the surrounding fabric to become a public square known by the same name. Nowadays, it is a major junction of the traffic flow in and out of the old city to the extramural areas. The Bab al-Faraj reconstruction project is one of the first preservation efforts in Aleppo. It started in 1978 and is still underway. The remains of the original gate were recently uncovered and are several meters under street level. The gate will be the focus in an archaeological park that is part of the modern civic programs in the leveled area.
The clock tower of Bab al-Faraj is one of the main landmarks of Aleppo. The tower was built in 1898-1899 by the Austrian architect Chartier.
Read more about this topic: Bab Al-Faraj (Aleppo)
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“To care for the quarrels of the past, to identify oneself passionately with a cause that became, politically speaking, a losing cause with the birth of the modern world, is to experience a kind of straining against reality, a rebellious nonconformity that, again, is rare in America, where children are instructed in the virtues of the system they live under, as though history had achieved a happy ending in American civics.”
—Mary McCarthy (1912–1989)
“The reverence for the Scriptures is an element of civilization, for thus has the history of the world been preserved, and is preserved.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“History has neither the venerableness of antiquity, nor the freshness of the modern. It does as if it would go to the beginning of things, which natural history might with reason assume to do; but consider the Universal History, and then tell us,—when did burdock and plantain sprout first?”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)