Ismailia

Ismailia was founded in 1863 as the base camp for the middle section of the Suez Canal, on a strip of desert beside Lake Timsah, and was named after Isma'il Pasha, the khedive of the day. The Suez Canal Company built it as a company town: a grid of low villas with gardens for its European engineers, a separate quarter for the tens of thousands of Egyptian labourers, and a freshwater canal brought from the Nile so that the works and the town could drink. Ferdinand de Lesseps lived here during the construction, and the town filled with guests for the opening celebrations of 1869.

After the canal opened, Ismailia settled into the role of administrative centre of the waterway, with the company's offices, workshops and a British and later international presence that lasted into the 1950s. On 25 January 1952 British troops surrounded and attacked the police headquarters in the city; the deaths there helped trigger the riots in Cairo the following day and are commemorated in Egypt as Police Day.

War then closed in twice. After 1967 the canal was shut and Ismailia lay directly on the front line; much of the population was evacuated and the city was heavily damaged by shelling. In October 1973 Egyptian forces crossed the canal near here, and the fighting of that war is recorded in memorials around the city. The canal reopened in 1975, residents returned, and reconstruction restored the low-rise character of the old quarter. Since then Ismailia has grown as a university city and a regional capital, with new districts spreading north and west.

Ismailia's reputation within Egypt is for calm and greenery: a city of trees, gardens and low buildings, visited by Cairenes for weekends by the water. That character comes from its origin as a planned company town, and the old quarter is one of the few places in Egypt where a 19th-century colonial layout survives more or less intact, now valued as heritage rather than resented.

The canal has produced a shared culture along its length. The simsimiyya, a small lyre, accompanies the sung and danced gatherings of the canal towns, with verses about work, the sea and the wars, and groups from Ismailia perform at festivals across the country. The city also hosts a long-established international festival of documentary and short film, which brings directors and audiences from across the Arab world and Africa each June.

Social customs are those of provincial Egypt. Family visits and the coffee house fill the evenings, Friday prayers set the rhythm of the week, and hospitality is pressed on guests. Suez Canal University gives the city a large student population, which shows in the cafés and the bookshops. The lake is central to leisure: fishing, rowing and swimming in summer, and long walks along the shore for the rest of the year.

About 380,000 people lived in the city in 2024, with more in the surrounding governorate, which stretches from the canal into farmland and desert reclamation schemes. Housing divides plainly between the old garden quarter, the dense streets of Hay al-Arab and the newer blocks spreading outwards, and the population grows steadily as people arrive from the Delta for work and study.

The economy rests on the canal, agriculture and education. The Suez Canal Authority employs pilots, engineers and administrators here; farms on reclaimed land around the city produce mangoes, strawberries, citrus and vegetables, with the mango crop the best known in Egypt; and Suez Canal University, with its teaching hospital, is one of the largest employers. Fishing on Lake Timsah adds a small trade of its own, and industrial zones along the canal corridor have drawn factories and logistics firms.

The day starts early and pauses through the hottest hours, with the streets filling again from late afternoon until well after dark. Weekends bring visitors from Cairo to the lake. The concerns of daily life are those of Egypt at large — inflation, the cost of housing and the search for steady work — with the added local worry of how much traffic, and therefore how much income, the canal is carrying.

Ismailia eats fish from the lake and the canal: tilapia, mullet and catfish, grilled over charcoal or fried and served with tahini, rocket, lemon and the flat bread that accompanies everything. Fish soup and sayadeya, fish baked over rice browned with caramelised onions, come from the same coastal tradition as Port Said and Damietta, and prawns appear when they come up the canal from the Red Sea.

The everyday food is Delta food. Ful medames, broad beans stewed overnight, and taameya, the Egyptian falafel made with split broad beans rather than chickpeas, are eaten for breakfast from carts and hole-in-the-wall shops. Koshary, the layered dish of rice, lentils, macaroni, fried onions and tomato sauce, is the cheap lunch. Molokhia, a green soup made from jute leaves and served over rice with rabbit or chicken, is the Friday dish in many households, and hamam mahshi, pigeon stuffed with rice or freekeh, is kept for celebrations.

Fruit is the local pride. Ismailia's orchards give Egypt some of its best mangoes, and the summer stalls also sell guava, dates, figs and strawberries grown on the reclaimed land nearby. Sweets are shared at feasts — basbousa soaked in syrup, kunafa and, at the Prophet's birthday, trays of sugared nuts and sesame bars. Tea is drunk strong and sweet, hibiscus and sugarcane juice are the street drinks, and coffee houses along the avenues serve them until late.