- Origin
- Byzantine church
- Restored
- Nur al-Din, 12th c.
- Lost
- Carved wooden mihrab
- State
- Standing
Aleppo's name is bound up with this story. The tradition holds that Abraham, passing through, milked his sheep on this hill and gave the milk away — halab al-shahba, the milking of the grey one — and whatever the history, the city has believed it long enough for the belief itself to be an antiquity.
The building began as a Byzantine church and became a mosque under the Mirdasids, restored by Nur al-Din Zangi in the middle of the twelfth century and again under al-Zahir Ghazi.
Nur al-Din gave it a carved wooden mihrab, one of the finest objects the Citadel ever held. It disappeared during the French Mandate and has never been recovered.