The Al-Salihin Cemetery, Aleppo

South of the old city of Aleppo, outside Bab al-Maqam. The cemetery has given its name to a quarter and to a slope: Salihin quarter and the Salihin descent. The road out of the gate carries straight on and drops down to it, so the city does not stop where the wall stops.

Getting there

Walk south from Bab al-Maqam. The road that ties the citadel to the Maqamat quarter runs on along the same line past the gate and descends to the cemetery; the slope takes its name from that descent. This is not an enclosed site. You enter from the surrounding streets and there is no gate.

What is inside

Maqam Ibrahim stands within the cemetery, and the south gate of the city is named directly after it: Bab al-Maqam, the Gate of the Shrine. North of the shrine there is also the Salihin mosque. The rest is close-packed headstones, some marble, some limestone, most of them from the last hundred years. Photographs from the early twentieth century record the Mamluk funerary buildings around Aleppo — domed tombs, reused column capitals scattered among the graves — and the ground was far emptier then than it is now.

Who lies here

The best known is the painter Louay Kayyali. He died in 1978 and was brought back to Aleppo and buried here; he is among the most recognised names in modern Syrian painting. The cemetery is also where the old families of the city bury their dead, and the Kayyali family stones are here. Graves are not signposted, so if you are looking for one you will have to ask.

How long it takes

Forty minutes, without counting time at Maqam Ibrahim. This is a working burial ground, not an open-air museum: keep away if a funeral is under way, ask before you photograph, and walk quietly between the stones. Women are expected to cover their hair.

Don’t miss

The line running down from the gate. Bab al-Maqam, the Mausoleum of Khayr Bak, the Al-Zahiriyya and Al-Kamiliyya madrasas, Maqam Ibrahim and the cemetery all sit on one axis. The cemetery is not something added at the end of that sequence but the reason for it: the city opened its south gate onto a pilgrim road, and then buried itself along it.