The second largest city in Syria with over 3 million inhabitants. The city on the Silk Road is an ancient trading metropolis which, in its 3,000-year history, experienced many conquerors who left their unmistakeable marks on the place: an extraordinarily diverse cultural city.

The Guloglou family, of Greek descent, originally with the name of Triandafilidis, originates from old Constantinople, where its members were engaged in the industrial sector. At the end of the 19th century they were forced to leave the city on the Bosphorus due to Turkish oppression. As a result, at the start of the 20th century they came to Aleppo via several stop offs, by then enlarged by a new Armenian branch of the family.

Here, too, the Guloglous were once again engaged in quite a few branches of commerce. They founded cotton and textile firms, spinning and other mills, and built refrigerating plant and irrigation systems for agriculture. The railway station in Aleppo - one of the most important industrial addresses within the sphere of the Baghdad railway - was run by this family up until the end of the 1930s.

Today, the old head of the family known as "Abu Lias Al Junani" (father Ilias the Greek), is regarded nationally as the business address for dependable advice and the sale of industrial goods.