Aleppo (Arabic: حلب‎ ['ḥalab], (36°13′N37°10′E) is a city in northern Syria, capital of the Aleppo Governorate. The city has a population of around 1.9 million, making it the second largest city in Syria after Damascus. Aleppo is one of the oldest inhabited cities in history. It knew human settlement since the eleventh millennium B.C. through the residential houses which were discovered in Al-Qaramel Hill. It was known to antiquity as Khalpe, Khalibon, to the Greeks as Beroea (Veroea), and to the Turks as Halep; during the French Mandate, Alep was used. It occupies a strategic trading point midway between the sea and the Euphrates; initially, it was built on a small group of hills in a wide fertile valley on both sides of the river Quweiq (قويق).