Aqaba

The head of the gulf has been a port for as long as there has been trade between Arabia, Egypt and the Levant. A settlement at Tell el-Kheleifeh near the modern shoreline dates to the Iron Age, and under Rome the town of Aila was a garrison and customs post at the end of the road from Petra, linked north by the Via Traiana Nova. A mudbrick church excavated here, built in the late third century, is among the oldest known buildings put up specifically for Christian worship.

After the Muslim conquest a new walled town, Ayla, was founded beside the old one in the seventh century and prospered on the pilgrimage and trade routes for several centuries before earthquakes and raiding reduced it. The Crusaders held the coast briefly in the twelfth century, building a post on the island offshore, and the Mamluks later rebuilt the fort that still stands in the centre of town; an Ottoman garrison occupied it into the twentieth century.

Modern Aqaba begins with the Arab Revolt. Forces under Faisal and Auda abu Tayi, accompanied by T. E. Lawrence, attacked from the desert and took the town in July 1917, opening a supply route from the sea. After the creation of Transjordan the port became the country's only outlet to open water, and it grew sharply after the 1965 exchange of territory with Saudi Arabia that lengthened the coastline. Heavy industry, phosphate exports and a container terminal followed. In 2001 the city and its coast were made the Aqaba Special Economic Zone, since when hotels, marinas and resort development have reshaped the shore.

Aqaba is the most mixed and least formal of Jordan's cities. Its people include old Aqabawi families, Bedouin from the Howeitat and other southern tribes, Jordanians from Amman and the north who came for work in the port and the zone, Egyptian labourers, and a steady flow of Gulf and European visitors. The result is a port culture: less conservative than the highland towns, used to strangers, and organised around the sea and the shift patterns of the docks.

Evening is the social time of day. Families come down to the corniche and the public beaches after sunset with food and shisha, children play late, and the gardens along the water stay busy until well after dark — a rhythm that intensifies in summer, when the daytime heat rules out everything else. Fishing, boating and diving are ordinary parts of local life rather than only tourist activities.

Religion and custom still set limits. Ramadan changes the hours of the whole city, mosques mark the day, and dress in the souk and residential districts is modest even where beachwear is normal a kilometre away. The Arab Revolt is a live part of local identity: its flag flies from the great flagpole by the fort, and the house of Sharif Hussein bin Ali stands beside it. Hospitality follows the Jordanian pattern of tea and cardamom coffee offered immediately and often.

About 150,000 people live in Aqaba, making it the largest city in southern Jordan and the only one on the coast. The economy has three legs: the port, which handles most of the country's imports and its phosphate and potash exports; the special economic zone, with its lower taxes, free-zone businesses and construction; and tourism, which fills the hotels in winter and empties them when the region is unsettled. Government, the navy and the airport add further employment.

Housing spreads inland and north from the old centre, and much of the workforce commutes in from those districts or from further afield in the governorate. Rents and land prices near the water are high by Jordanian standards, and the contrast between the resort strip and the working-class quarters is one of the city's recurring subjects. Water, as everywhere in Jordan, is scarce and supplied on a rota, and desalination and pipeline projects are a standing political issue.

The day is shaped by heat for much of the year: shops open early, close through the afternoon and reopen into the night. Port and industrial work continues in shifts. Weekends bring Jordanians down from Amman for the beaches, and the city fills again during school holidays and Eid. Disruption to Red Sea shipping has made the port's traffic a matter of national attention.

Aqaba is the one place in Jordan where the food is built on the sea. Sayadieh is the city's signature: fish, usually a firm white species, served on rice cooked with cumin and stock and darkened with slowly fried onions, with tahini sauce and lemon alongside. Whole fish grilled or fried and chosen from ice at the counter is the standard restaurant meal, often with prawns, calamari and a spread of mezze.

The rest of the table is Jordanian. Hummus, foul, falafel and fried eggs are breakfast; mansaf, lamb in a sauce of fermented dried yoghurt called jameed poured over rice and shrak bread, marks weddings and family occasions; maqluba, the upturned pot of rice, meat and fried vegetables, is the everyday feast dish. Galayet bandora, tomatoes cooked down with olive oil and chilli, and musakhan, sumac chicken on flatbread, appear widely.

Sweets and drinks follow the Levantine pattern: knafeh with its shredded pastry and syrup, ma'amoul biscuits filled with dates or nuts at feast times, and sugarcane and pomegranate juice from stalls downtown. Coffee is Arabic-style with cardamom; tea is black, sweet and flavoured with mint or sage. Because of the economic zone's lower duties, alcohol is cheaper and more visible here than elsewhere in the country, sold in shops as well as hotel bars.