Marsa Matruh

The bay that shelters Marsa Matruh has been used for as long as ships have sailed this coast. Blocks and inscriptions found near the lagoon point to a pharaonic presence, and under the Ptolemies the harbour became a working port known as Paraetonium, handling grain and trade between Egypt and Cyrenaica. The Romans kept it as a garrison and customs post on the road west, and Christian communities followed; the coast then passed to Arab rule after the 7th century and became Bedouin country, the harbour reduced to a fishing anchorage for centuries.

The town's modern shape dates from the 19th and early 20th centuries, when the Egyptian state took an interest in the coast; the railway from Alexandria was extended to the town in 1936. Its best-known chapter is the Second World War. The Western Desert Campaign swept back and forth along this shore between 1940 and 1942, the town changed hands, and Erwin Rommel used a cave above the eastern bay as a headquarters. The decisive battles were fought at El Alamein, on the coast to the east, in the summer and autumn of 1942, and the cemeteries and memorials there are the campaign's lasting mark on this coastline.

After the war Marsa Matruh grew as a governorate capital and then, from the 1970s onwards, as a summer resort for Egyptians, drawn by water clearer than anything near Alexandria. The paved road south to Siwa, completed in the 1980s, made the town the gateway to the oasis. Since the 2010s the coast either side has been transformed by holiday developments, and a large investment deal for Ras El Hekma, signed with an Abu Dhabi state investment company in 2024, promises more building along the shore east of town.

Matruh is Bedouin country. The Awlad Ali, whose tribal territory stretches from around Alexandria to the Libyan border and across it, dominate the region, and their customs shape daily life: tribal mediation alongside state courts, an unusually strong code of hospitality, and family and lineage as the first markers of identity. Bedouin Arabic here is closer to the speech of eastern Libya than to the Egyptian of the Nile Valley, and cross-border family ties are normal.

Poetry, sung and recited, is the region's own art form, performed at weddings and gatherings, and weddings themselves are large, multi-day affairs with drumming, processions and communal cooking of sheep. Silverwork, weaving and embroidery in dark red and black patterns are the traditional crafts, and rugs and blankets woven from sheep's wool are still made inland.

The summer season imposes a second, different culture on the town for three months, when Egyptian families from Cairo and the Delta fill the beaches and the corniche and the streets stay busy until the small hours. Social rules remain conservative through all of it: modest dress, swimming in clothes for most local women, little public alcohol, and a clear separation between the holiday shore and the life of the town behind it.

Marsa Matruh is a modest town for most of the year whose population multiplies several times over in July and August. As the capital of Matrouh Governorate it holds the courts, hospitals, schools and government offices for an enormous, thinly populated stretch of coast and desert, and those jobs, along with tourism, fishing and trade, are the mainstay of the local economy.

Away from the sea, the coastal strip is farmed by rain rather than irrigation: barley, figs, olives and almonds grown in shallow valleys where run-off collects, with sheep and goats grazed on the desert margin. It is a precarious system, sensitive to years of poor rain, and many families combine it with work in the town or in Libya. Smuggling across the western border, and the policing of it, are facts of life in the region.

The rhythm of the year is sharper here than in most Egyptian towns: an intense, crowded, profitable summer, then eight quiet months in which many hotels and beach cafés close, students return to Alexandria and the seafront empties. New resort construction along the coast in both directions has brought work and also pressure on water, roads and the beaches themselves.

The coast eats fish. Mediterranean catch — bass, bream, mullet, sardines and squid — is chosen at the counter, weighed and then grilled over charcoal or fried, served with rice, tahina, salads and baladi bread. Sayadeya, fish served on rice cooked with browned onion, tomato and spices, is the classic dish of the Egyptian coasts, and fish soup with cumin and tomato is common in the cooler months.

Bedouin cooking sits behind it. Lamb or goat slow-cooked for guests is the centre of hospitality, served on rice with bread baked on a domed metal sheet or in the embers, and yoghurt, buttermilk and clarified butter from sheep and goats are everyday foods. The coast's rain-fed farms give figs, olives, almonds and watermelon, which appear in the summer markets along with dates trucked up from Siwa.

The standard Egyptian repertoire fills out the rest: ful medames and ta'meya at breakfast, koshari at lunch, kofta and grilled chicken in the evening, molokhia and stuffed vegetables at home. Tea is drunk strong and very sweet, Bedouin tea often flavoured with sage or mint, and coffee is served in small cups; karkadeh and fresh juices are the summer drinks on the corniche.