From the sixteenth to the eighteenth century, Aleppo was the most important city in the Ottoman empire boasting an extremely rich and complex history. By universalizing the discussions of Aleppo, Nachar undoes nostalgic historical accounts and demystifies the charming discourse of the ancient oriental city. Like any other city, Aleppo has its entangled worlds and complex class struggles. Karam Nachar takes us in a journey through the last four hundred years which gave rise to Aleppo as a world trade center. We hear about the class- and sect-related tensions that this rise engendered in the city and continued to inform its social politics until our present day.