Aleppo vs Manchester

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Aleppo ( ə-LEH-poh; Arabic: ﺣَﻠَﺐ‎ / ALA-LC: Ḥalab, IPA: [ˈħalab]) is a city in Syria, which serves as the capital of the Aleppo Governorate, the most populous Syrian governorate. With an official population of 4.6 million in 2010, Aleppo was the largest Syrian city before the Syrian Civil War; however, it is now the second-largest city in Syria, after the capital Damascus.Aleppo is one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world; it may have been inhabited since the sixth millennium BC. Excavations at Tell as-Sawda and Tell al-Ansari, just south of the old city of Aleppo, show that the area was occupied by Amorites by the latter part of the third millennium BC. That is also the time at which Aleppo is first mentioned in cuneiform tablets unearthed in Ebla and Mesopotamia, which speak of it as part of the Amorite state of Yamhad, and note its commercial and military importance. Such a long history is attributed to its strategic location as a trading center between the Mediterranean Sea and Mesopotamia. For centuries, Aleppo was the largest city in the Syrian region, and the Ottoman Empire's third-largest after Constantinople and Cairo.

The city's significance in history has been its location at one end of the Silk Road, which passed through Central Asia and Mesopotamia. When the Suez Canal was inaugurated in 1869, much trade was diverted to sea and Aleppo began its slow decline. At the fall of the Ottoman Empire after World War I, Aleppo lost its northern hinterland to modern Turkey, as well as the important Baghdad Railway connecting it to Mosul. In the 1940s it lost its main access to the sea, Antakya and İskenderun, also to Turkey. The growth in importance of Damascus in the past few decades further exacerbated the situation. This decline may have helped to preserve the old city of Aleppo, its medieval architecture and traditional heritage. It won the title of the "Islamic Capital of Culture 2006", and has had a wave of successful restorations of its historic landmarks. The Battle of Aleppo (2012–2016) occurred in the city during the Syrian Civil War, and many parts of the city suffered massive destruction. Affected parts of the city are currently undergoing reconstruction. An estimated 31,000 people were killed in Aleppo during the conflict.

Source: Wikipedia

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Manchester () is a city and metropolitan borough in Greater Manchester, England. The city has a population of 547,627 (as of 2018) and lies within the United Kingdom's second-most populous urban area, with a population of 2.7 million and second-most populous metropolitan area, with a population of 3.3 million. It is fringed by the Cheshire Plain to the south, the Pennines to the north and east, and an arc of towns with which it forms a continuous conurbation. The local authority for the city is Manchester City Council. The recorded history of Manchester began with the civilian settlement associated with the Roman fort of Mamucium or Mancunium, which was established in about AD 79 on a sandstone bluff near the confluence of the rivers Medlock and Irwell. Although historically and traditionally a part of Lancashire, areas of Cheshire south of the River Mersey were incorporated into Manchester in the 20th century. The first to be included, Wythenshawe, was added to the city in 1931. Throughout the Middle Ages Manchester remained a manorial township, but began to expand "at an astonishing rate" around the turn of the 19th century. Manchester's unplanned urbanisation was brought on by a boom in textile manufacture during the Industrial Revolution, and resulted in it becoming the world's first industrialised city.

Manchester achieved city status in 1853. The Manchester Ship Canal opened in 1894, creating the Port of Manchester and directly linking the city to the Irish Sea, 36 miles (58 km) to the west. Its fortune declined after the Second World War, owing to deindustrialisation, but the IRA bombing in 1996 led to extensive investment and regeneration. Following successful redevelopment after the IRA bombing, Manchester was the host city for the 2002 Commonwealth Games. The city is notable for its architecture, culture, musical exports, media links, scientific and engineering output, social impact, sports clubs and transport connections. Manchester Liverpool Road railway station was the world's first inter-city passenger railway station. At the University of Manchester, Ernest Rutherford first split the atom in 1917, Frederic C. Williams, Tom Kilburn and Geoff Tootill developed the world's first stored-program computer in 1948, and Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov isolated the first graphene in 2004.

Source: Wikipedia