The church in
#Aleppo opens its doors to those fleeing the neighborhoods of (al-Ashrafiya and Sheikh Maqsoud).
• For the sake of historical irony, this area’s original name was: (Jabal al-Sayyida al-‘Adhra’). And it is a purely Christian area, with cemeteries, monasteries, and ancient caves dating back thousands of years. Human settlements and archaeological sites were recorded there going back even to pre-Christian times. But the area’s name changed in the modern era, around the 1950s.
• In reality, it is a Christian Arab area to which Kurds fleeing wars in their original homelands migrated, and Aleppo’s notables, churchmen, and merchants allocated land for them to shelter on, gave them homes and civilian headquarters and housing as a gift. And the majority of those who entered it were “Sunni Kurds” who intermingled with the people of Aleppo, became in-laws to them, associated with them, and the people integrated—until Hafez al-Assad came in the 1970s, and began introducing the Kurdistan Workers’ Party into the two neighborhoods, settling them there and establishing armed bases for them, to use them—as is well known—as a tool in provoking Türkiye and blackmailing both the Kurdish and Turkish sides. And his son Bashar returned to repeat his father’s actions, consecrating the area as a military base to confront the Syrian revolutionaries starting in 2011, launching joint attacks on them, besieging them, and shelling the old neighborhoods of Aleppo. And today they have all become under the umbrella of the name
#SDF, which after the liberation also absorbed remnants of the Assad regime, its ghosts, and elements from the Baqir Brigade and the al-Quds Brigade who were financially Shi’ified, after the spread of Iranian Shi’ification among the poor and needy in its outskirts and nearby rural areas, and even Kurds who were Shi’ified as well, whom Iran used within the SDF.