Beersheba

The wells that gave Beersheba its name made it a meeting point long before there was a town: Tel Be'er Sheva, a fortified settlement of the Iron Age on a low hill east of the modern centre, is connected by tradition with the biblical patriarchs Abraham and Isaac, and its deep well and horned altar are among the best-known finds of Negev archaeology. The site was abandoned in antiquity, and for many centuries the area belonged to the Bedouin tribes of the northern desert, who watered their flocks here.

The modern city was created by the Ottoman administration around 1900 as a district centre for those tribes — a planned grid of stone houses, a mosque, a school and a governor's residence, laid out from scratch for a district that had no town. British Empire forces took Beersheba on 31 October 1917 in a battle remembered for a charge by the Australian Light Horse; the Commonwealth war cemetery dates from that campaign. Under the British Mandate it remained a small market town.

Israeli forces captured Beersheba in October 1948 and it became the base for settling the Negev. Immigrants from North Africa, Iraq, Romania and later the Soviet Union and Ethiopia filled successive rings of housing blocks, and the population multiplied many times over within a few decades. Ben-Gurion University opened in 1969, the Soroka hospital grew into the region's medical centre, and from the 2010s the army's technology units and a cyber park beside the railway station gave the city a new role. Restoration of the Ottoman Old City has turned its oldest streets into the Negev's main evening quarter.

Beersheba is a city of arrivals, and its culture reflects each wave. North African Jewish traditions remain strong in its synagogues, its food and the Mimouna celebrations at the end of Passover; the Russian-speaking community that came in the 1990s supports its own shops, newspapers and cultural life and makes up a large share of the population; Ethiopian Israelis, Indian Jewish families and Bedouin residents add further layers. Little of this is packaged for visitors, which is part of the city's character.

The university sets much of the tone. Some twenty thousand students keep the Old City's bars and cafés busy, support a theatre company, galleries and a conservatory, and give the city an average age well below the national one. The city is also proud of its role in Israeli sport, with a football club that has won national titles and a basketball team, and of its part in the country's technology sector.

Relations with the Negev Bedouin, some of whom live in recognised towns such as Rahat and others in villages the state does not recognise, run through daily life here: they study at the university, are treated at the hospital and trade at the market, while disputes over land and services continue. Manners are direct and informal, Hebrew, Arabic and Russian are all heard in the street, and the working week ends on Friday afternoon, when the city goes quiet for Shabbat.

About 224,000 people live in Beersheba, making it the eighth most populous city in Israel and by far the largest in the south. Most live in apartment blocks in the lettered quarters built between the 1950s and 1970s or in the newer northern neighbourhoods, and the city is still growing outwards as young families priced out of the centre of the country move south.

Work is concentrated in a few large institutions: the Soroka Medical Centre, one of the biggest hospitals in the country; Ben-Gurion University and its research institutes; the municipality and regional government; the army bases that have moved to the Negev; and the technology and cyber-security companies clustered in the park beside the northern railway station. Chemical plants at Ne'ot Hovav and Rotem lie to the south. Incomes are below the national average and poverty is higher, particularly in the older quarters.

The rhythm of the day is set by heat and by the Jewish week. Mornings start early, the middle of the day empties the streets in summer, and evenings bring people out to the river park, the malls and the Old City. Trains to Tel Aviv carry commuters north each morning and students home each Thursday. Water supply, industrial pollution to the south, traffic and the slow expansion of housing into the desert are the standing local issues, alongside the effects of the wider conflict on a city within range of rocket fire.

Beersheba eats like the communities that built it. North African Jewish kitchens set the standard: couscous steamed over a broth of vegetables and chickpeas, chraime — fish simmered in a hot red pepper and tomato sauce — mafrum, potatoes stuffed with spiced meat, and harissa on the table. Iraqi families contribute kubbeh dumplings in tart soups and sabich, the pita of fried aubergine, egg and tahini, and Yemenite cooking adds malawach and jachnun, layered breads eaten with grated tomato and the fenugreek relish hilbeh.

The city's everyday food is the Israeli standard done cheaply and well: hummus served warm with whole chickpeas and olive oil, falafel, shawarma carved into pita with salads and pickles, bourekas from the bakeries and strong coffee. Grill restaurants near the market serve skewers and meorav, the mixed grill of chicken cuts. The open market sells Medjool dates from the Arava, olives, spices, Negev goat's cheese and seasonal vegetables, and the Bedouin market adds stalls of its own.

Bedouin hospitality is part of the region's food culture: coffee bitter with cardamom poured from a long-spouted pot, sweet tea flavoured with sage, thin bread baked on a domed griddle and rice with lamb for guests, served in and around Rahat and the desert villages. Wines from the Negev highlands, grown under drip irrigation, appear on local lists, and the Old City's restored streets hold the bars, cafés and modern restaurants that draw students and visitors at night.