Al-'Aqaba (Jordan's Red Sea port)

Al-'Aqaba is the only seaport of Jordan, at the head of the gulf of 'Aqaba on the Red Sea. It succeeded the town of Ayla, and its name means the pass of Ayla.

The Encyclopaedia of Islam (2nd ed.), unsigned article, describes al-'Aqaba as the sole seaport of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, on the eastern side of the head of the Gulf of 'Aqaba at the foot of Jabal Umm Nusayla. It is the successor of Ayla, and its name is a shortened form of 'Aqabat Ayla, the pass of Ayla, through Jabal Umm Nusayla on the route to Ma'an. The pass was improved under the Tulunid Khumarawayh (884–95) and gave its name to the town. Ibn Battuta still knew the place as 'Aqabat Ayla, and by the sixteenth century it had its present name. ¹

At the very end of the Mamluk period, in 920/1514–15, Sultan Qansuh al-Ghawri built through his architect Khayr Bey a fortified khan at al-'Aqaba to protect the pilgrims from raiders. Under Ottoman rule the town had shrunk by the early twentieth century to a village of some fifty huts, and the Suez Canal and the Hijaz railway had deprived it of traffic. Ottoman troops held it as a frontier garrison. During a naval bombardment, it was taken by Anglo-Arab forces on 6 July 1917. It became part of the Hijaz, and in 1925 it was annexed to Transjordan with the district of Ma'an. After 1948 it grew rapidly, and in 1954 it was planned as Jordan's outlet on the Red Sea. ²