After 301 AD, when Christianity became the official state religion of Armenia and its population, Aleppo became an important center for Armenian pilgrims on their way to Jerusalem.

By some estimates, Armenians accounted for a quarter of Aleppo's population by the middle of the twentieth century, by which time they had become a respected, upwardly mobile community.

Later, as a result of political upheaval in Syria, Armenians began to emigrate to Lebanon and later to Europe, the Americas and Australia, especially in the 1970s and 1980s.

However, the current building of the church was built and completed in 1491 to replace a small chapel in the old Christian cemetery of the Jdeydeh quarter.

The church was named in honour of a group of Roman soldiers who faced martyrdom near the city of Sebastia in Lesser Armenia, and were all venerated in Christianity as the Forty Martyrs of Sebaste.

[1] During the following years, Forty Martyrs Cathedral frequently became a temporary seat of many Armenian catholicoi of the Holy See of Cilicia.

The church never had a belfry until 1912, when a bell tower was erected by the donation of the Syrian-Armenian philanthropist Rizkallah Tahhan from Brazil.

On 26 April 2000, the Armenian community of Aleppo marked the 500th anniversary of the first enlargement of the church under the patronage of Catholicos Aram I, during the period of Archbishop Souren Kataroyan.

The Forty Martyrs Cathedral is the seat of the Armenian Diocese of Beroea and one of the oldest active churches in the city.

The church complex is also home to the Zarehian Treasury, Haygazian Armenian School, Avetis Aharonian theatre hall and Nikol Aghbalian branch of Hamazkayin Educational and Cultural Society.