Suweiqat Hatem

A market street in the Farafira quarter of Aleppo. Suweiqa is made up of two long alleys, Suweiqat Ali and Suweiqat Hatem, both in the same quarter. A group of khans and smaller markets stands around them, and what is sold is mostly household and kitchen equipment.

What suweiqa means

Souq means market and suweiqa is its diminutive: the little market. The name gives you the scale before you arrive. Al-Madina Souq is a trading centre that supplied the whole city and well beyond it; a suweiqa is the quarter’s own market, for the daily shop. Both alleys are named after people rather than trades, after Ali and Hatem. The covered lanes go by craft; here the logic is neighbourhood.

Getting there

Farafira lies on the north-west side of the old city and you walk in through the quarter itself. The Khanqah al-Farafira stands in the same streets, a few minutes from the market alley. This street is not roofed the way the covered souq is, and stretches of it are open, so the walk happens under the sky rather than under a vault.

What is sold

Pots, pans, basins, plastic containers, brooms, kitchen sets. Nothing here is aimed at visitors, and that absence is the point of the street: if you want to see where Aleppo does its everyday shopping, this is the place rather than the covered market. Prices follow from that. They are household prices, not souvenir prices.

How long it takes

Half an hour. Walking the alley takes ten minutes, but there is little sense in visiting Suweiqa alone; it goes together with the Farafira quarter, the khanqah and the khan doors around it.

What most people miss

The khan doors. Openings on both sides of the market street lead into khans, and because they sit between shop fronts nobody notices them. Step through one. The noise of the street stops behind the door and the courtyard is quiet. In Aleppo that change takes about a metre.