Bibliotheca Polyglotta

▪ »According to a popular legend in the Middle Ages, the name Aleppo (Ḥalab) came from the Ar vb. ḥalaba ʻto milk’ because Abraham would have milked his flocks here. This origin myth thus linked Aleppo to one of the most prestigious figures in the Muslim tradition. In reality, however, Ḥalab derives from the name the city had as early as the second millennium B.C.E. (Khalab in Hittite, Khrb in Eg, and Khallaba in Akk)« – A.-M. Eddé, “Aleppo (pre-Ottoman)”, in EI³.
▪ When the name first appears in the sources the city »already had a very long past behind it. It seems that a rural settlement was formed there in prehistoric times and that this village gradually gained ascendance over the others in the area, owing to the relatively wide resources of its site and in particular to the presence there of a rocky eminence on which the citadel still stands today: it was this acropolis, one of the strongest and the most easily manned defensive positions in the whole of northern Syria, which enabled the masters of the place to extend control over their neighbours so as to found the “great kingdom” which was, in the 20th century B.C., to enter into relations with the Hittites of Anatolia« – J. Sauvaget, “Ḥalab”, in EI².
▪ »[The name Ḥalab] is of obscure origin. Some have proposed that Ḥalab means ʻiron’ or ʻcopper’ in Amorite languages, since the area served as a major source of these metals in antiquity. Another possibility is that Ḥalab means ʻwhite’, as this is the word for ʻwhite’ in Aramaic, the local language which preceded regional Arabization« – en.wiki, “Aleppo#Etymology”.

hist

▪ …

cogn

–

disc

▪ See above, section CONC.

west

▪ The form Aleppo represents the Italianised version of the Arabic name.

deriv

For other values attached to the root, cf. ↗¹ḥalab, ↗ḥalbaẗ, ↗ḥulbaẗ, ↗maḥlab, ↗ḥālib, as well as, for the overall picture, root entry ↗√ḤLB.

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