Al-Sabil Park

The park was opened under the Ottoman governor Raif Pasha. English Wikipedia and Wikidata give 1895; Arabic Wikipedia gives the Hijri year 1315, which it equates with 1896. It takes its name from a drinking fountain, the Sabil ad-Darawish (“fountain of the dervishes”), on whose grounds it was laid out; Arabic Wikipedia adds that the fountain used to be filled with rainwater and stood at the edge of the city at the time.

On 24 February 1947 the governor of Aleppo, Emir Mustafa al-Shihabi, reopened the park after a complete renovation. According to Arabic Wikipedia, the “New Sabil Garden” was joined to it on that occasion.[1][2][3]

The park is rectangular. English Wikipedia gives its area as 6 hectares and places it on King Faisal Street; Arabic Wikipedia gives 27 dunams after the 1947 enlargement and names Tishreen Street, which links the city centre with the north-western countryside. Arabic Wikipedia also describes three gates – on Tishreen Street, towards the al-Sabil district and by the café – and a music pavilion whose canopy was built to throw back a speaker's voice.[1][2][4]

According to Arabic Wikipedia the park contains a café and a restaurant used for celebrations, and a small animal enclosure that once held monkeys, peacocks, rabbits and pigeons.

A musical water fountain was installed in the centre of the park. English Wikipedia dates it to May 2007; Arabic Wikipedia gives 2006 and links it to the projects for “Aleppo, Capital of Islamic Culture”, citing a cost of four million Syrian pounds and two computer systems that turn pre-set or live-composed melodies into control signals for pumps and valves.[1][2]

The available sources describe the park only up to the installation of the fountain in 2006/2007. No information on its later condition is available.[1][2]