favourable opportunity to penetrate into China busied himself
for three years in teaching mathematics. His thirty years'
residence in China was marked by unceasing zeal and considerable
success. He adopted the dress and manners of the country,
was the first Christian missionary in Kiang-si, and built
several churches in Fo-Kien. He wrote in Chinese a Life of
Christ (Pekin, 1635-1637, 8 vols.; often reprinted, e.g.
in 1887 in 3 vols., and used even by Protestant missionaries)
and a cosmography (Iche fang wai ki Hang-chow, 1623, 6
vols.), which was translated into Manchu under the title The
True Origin of 10,000 Things, a copy of which was sent
from Pekin to Paris in 1789. Alenio died at Fu-chow in 1649.
For bibliography see de Backer and Sommervogel,
Bibl. de la Cie. de Jesus, i. 158-160.
ALEPPO (native Haleb.) (1) A vilayet of Asiatic Turkey,
comprising N. Syria and N.W. Mesopotamia, with an extension N.
of Taurus to the neighbourhood of Gorun. It comprises three
sanjaks, Aleppo, Marash and Urfa. About half is mountain, but
there are fertile plains of great extent N. of Antakia, S. of
Marash and around the city of Aleppo (see below). The only
seaport of importance is Alexandretta (q.v..) The exports
are, on the average, over one million sterling, and imports
about double in value. The settled population is barely a
million; but there is a considerable unsettled element in the
S.E. which cannot well be estimated. The Christians, mainly
Jacobite Syrian, but including also Armenians of several
denominations (e.g. those of Marash and Zeitun), Maronites
and Greeks, form about one-fifth. There are some 20,000
Jews, resident chiefly in the provincial capital; and of the
Moslem majority the bulk is Arab, Turkoman and Ansarieh.
In the N.W. and N. is a considerable Kurdish population.
(2) The provincial capital (anc. Khalep; Gr. Chaljbon-
Beroea), situated on a plateau in the valley of the
Kuwaik (anc. Chalus) about 10 m. above its dissipation
in the great salt-marsh of Matkh. Pop. about 130,000,
three-quarters Moslem. Aleppo is about midway between
the sea and the Euphrates, a little nearer the latter.
The modern city stands on both banks of the Kuwaik, and the
older portions are contained within a Saracenic wall, 3 1/2 m. in
circuit with seven gates. The European residents and Christians
live outside in the Kitab and new Azizieh quarters, and the
Jews in that of Bahsita. A modern citadel occupies the N.W.,
the medieval castle on its mound (partly artificial and not a
strong position, according to Istakhri) being almost deserted
but still forbidden to visitors. There are two mosques of
special interest--the Umawi (or Zakaria) on the site of
a church ascribed to the empress Helena and containing a tomb
reputed to be that of the Baptist's father, and the Kakun.
Many minor ones serve the needs of a population traditionally
fanatical. Gardens extend for miles along the river, and
the bazaars and khans are unusually large. The climate is
cold, dry and healthy, despite the prevalence of the famous
``Aleppo button,'' a swelling which appears either on the
face or on the hands, and breaks into an ulcer which lasts
a year and leaves a permanent scar. It has been ascribed
to a fly, to the water and to other causes; but it is not
peculiar to Aleppo, being rife also at Aintab, Bagdad, &c.
The attempt made by the British Euphrates expedition in
1841 to connect Aleppo with the sea by steamer through the
nearest point on the Euphrates, Meskine, failed owing to
the obstructed state of the stream and the insecurity of the
riparian districts. The latter drawback has been minimized
by the continued success of the Aleppo administration in
inducing the Anazeh Bedouins to become fellahin; but river
traffic has not been resumed. A railway, however, connects
southward with the Beirut-Damascus line at Rayak. Aleppo is
an important consular station for all European powers, the
residence of the Greek and Armenian Patriarchs of Antioch,
and of Jacobite and Maronite bishops, and a station of Roman
Catholic and Protestant missions. It is the emporium of N.
Syria, and manufactures textiles in silk, cotton and wool,
carpets and leather commodities, besides being the centre of
a large district growing cereals, pistachios and fruit. The
Turks regard it as one of the strongholds of their dominion and
faith, and a future capital of their empire should they be
forced into Asia. As a centre from which good natural roads
lead N., N.E., W. and S., Aleppo would make a good capital.
History and Remains.--The site lies high (1400 ft.) on eight
hillocks in a fertile oasis plain, beyond which stretch on the
S. and S.E. grassy steppes merging ere long into desert, and
on the other quarters rather sterile downs. It has superseded
Antioch as the economic centre of N. Syria, and Palmyra as
the great road-station for eastern caravans. But it is rather
a revived than a new capital; Khalep was a very ancient
Syrian and probably ``Hittite'' city of importance, known from
Babylonian, Assyrian and Egyptian records. Seleucus Nicator
gave it a Macedonian name, Beroea; but Chalcis, some distance
S., was the capital of the province, Chalcidice (later,
Kinnasrin), in which it lay, and the centre of that hellenized
region, now a vast field of ruins, which stretches W. to the
Orontes. Khalep-Beroea, we may infer, remained a native
town and a focus of Aramaic influence, a fact which will
explain the speedy oblivion of its Macedonian name and the
permanent revival of its ancient title, even by Greeks.
As Beroea we hear of the place in Seleucid wars and
dissensions. There Menelaus, the fomenter of war with the
Asmoneans, was put to death by Lysias in 164 B. C., ``as the
manner is in that place'' (Macc. ii. 13. 4), being thrown
into a lofty tower full of cinders. There Heracleon, the court
favourite and murderer of Antiochus Grypus, was born and made
himself a principality (96 B.C.); and there the son of the
latter king besieged his brother Philip in the last struggle
for the heritage of Seleucus. As Chalybon, the town is
called by Ptolemy head of a district, Chalybonitis; but
we continue to hear of it as Beroea up to the Arab conquest,
e.g. in the history of Julian's eastward march in A.D.
363, and in that of the Persian raid of 540. It was occupied
in 611 by Chosroes II. Overwhelmed by the Saracen flood in
A.D. 638, Beroea disappears, and as Moslem society settles
down Halep emerges again as the great gathering-place of
caravans passing from Asia Minor and Syria to Mesopotamia,
Bagdad and the Persian and Indian kingdoms. Like Antioch
it suffered from earthquakes, and late in the 12th century,
after a terrible shock, had to be rebuilt by Nur ed-Din.
But neither earthquakes nor the plague, to which it was also
peculiarly liable, could divert trade and prosperity from
it. It belonged to the Eastern Caliphate (the Hanidanids)
until temporarily reoccupied by John Zimisces, emperor of
Byzantium and a native of neighbouring Hierapolis (q.v.),
A.D. 974, after an abortive attempt by Nicephorus thirteen
years earlier. Thirteen years later it recognized and
received the Fatimites, and passed under various Moslem
dynasties, forming part of the Seljuk dominion from 1090 to
1117. The crusading princes of Antioch never held the place,
though they attacked it in 1124; and Saladin, who took it in
1183, made it a stronghold against them and the northern capital
of himself and his successors until the Tatar invasion of
1260. Thereafter the Mamelukes took and kept possession,
despite the renewed Tatar inroad of 1401, until the final
conquest by the Ottomans in 1517. Under the strong hand of
the latter the trade of Aleppo with the East revived. One of
the first provincial factories and consulates of the British
Turkey (Levant) Company was established there in the reign of
James I.; and a British agent had been in residence there even
in Elizabeth's time. As the eastern outpost of the company's
operations, it was connected with the western outpost of the
East India Company in Bagdad by a private postal service,
and its name became very familiar in England from the part
that its merchants (largely Jewish) bore in the transmission
of Eastern products to Europe (cf., e.g. Shakespeare,
Macb. i. 3. 7; Oth. v. 2. 352). Through it passed the
silks of Bambyce, called bombazines, the light textiles
of Mosul (mosulines--muslins) and many other commodities
for the wealthy and luxurious. The first blow was struck at
this trade by the discovery of the Cape route to India; the
second by the opening of a land route through Egypt to the
Red Sea; the third and final one by the making of the Suez
Canal. Long ere this last event, however, Aleppo had been
declining from internal causes. In the latter part of the
18th century and the first years of the 19th it was constantly
the scene of bloody dissensions between two rival parties,
one led by the local janissaries, the other by the sherifs
(religious); and the Ottoman governors took the side, now
of one, now of the other, in order to plunder a distracted
city, too far removed from the centre to be controlled by the
sultans, and too near the rebellious pashalik of Acre and
the unsettled district of Lebanon not to be affected by the
disorders natural to a frontier province. This state of things
led to the suspension of the British consulate by the Turkey
Company in 1791; and it was not revived till 1800, after which
date till 1825 it was maintained jointly by the East India
Company. In 1803 Jezzar of Acre advanced as near as Hamah;
but his death occurred in the following year; and after a
sanguinary rising in 1805, Aleppo settled down, but was not at
peace, even after a local janissary massacre in 1814, till
Mahmud II. had dealt finally with the corps at headquarters
(1826). Meanwhile there had been a frightful earthquake in
1822, and a visitation of cholera in the following year. More
cholera in 1827 and 1832 and another earthquake in 1830 had
left the place a wreck, with only half its former population,
when Mehemet Ali of Cairo invaded and took Syria. Aleppo
shared, and to some extent headed, the Syrian discontent
with Egyptian rule, and was strongly held by troops whose
huge barracks are still one of the sights of the city. Ready
to rise behind Ibrahim Pasha in 1839, it was only prevented
by the news of Nezib. Tumults and massacres of Christians
occurred in 1850 and 1862, accompanied by great destruction
of property; but on the whole, since the consolidation of
Ottoman rule over Syria by Abdul Mejid's ministers, Aleppo has
been reviving, although its trade is more local than of old.
BIBLIOGRAPHY.--F. R. Chesney, The Euphrates Expedition (1850)
H. Guys, Statistique du Pachalik d'Alep (1853), and Esquisse de
l'etat de la Syrie (1862); E. B. B. Barker, Syria and Egypt
(1876); W. F. Ainsworth, Personal Narrative of the Euphrates
Expedition (1888); E. R. Bevan, Heuse of Seleucas (1902); G.
le Strange, Palestine under the Moslems (1890). (D. G. H.)
ALES (ALESIUS), ALEXANDER (1500-1565), Scottish divine
of the school of Augsburg, whose family name was ALANE,
was born at Edinburgh on the 23rd of April 1500. He studied
at St Andrews in the newly-founded college of St Leonard's,
where he graduated in 1515. Some time afterwards he was
appointed a canon of the collegiate church, and at first
contended vigorously for the scholastic theology as against
the doctrines of the Reformers. His views were entirely
changed, however, on the execution of Patrick Hamilton, abbot
of Fern, in 1528. He had been chosen to meet Hamilton in
