Aqaba ( Arabic: العقبة al-ʿAqabah; Standard Hebrew עקבה) is a town in southwest Jordan, its only seaport, bordering Elat, Israel. Aqaba and Elat are at the head (inside) of the Gulf of Aqaba.
It exports phosphate and some shells, and is a diving resort.
1 History
Aqaba was known as Elath (אילת ʾÊlaṯ) in Biblical Hebrew (and presumably Edomite) in ancient times. It was a centre of the Edomites, and then of the Arab Nabataeans. The Ptolemaic Greeks called it Berenice, and the RomanRome ( Italian and Latin Roma is the capital city of Italy, and of its Lazio region. It is located on the lower Tiber river, near the Mediterranean Sea, at 41°50'N, 12°15'E. The Vatican City State, a sovereign enclave within Rome, is the seat of the Romans Aila and Aelana. Soon after MuhammadMuhammad ( Arabic also transliterated Mohammad Mohammed and formerly Mahomet following Latin spelling) was the founder of Islam, and is revered by Muslims as the final prophet of God. According to his traditional Muslim biographies (called sirah in Arabic's time, it became part of the new Caliphate, and thereafter passed through the hands of such dynasties as the UmayyadThe Umayyad Dynasty (Arabic / ''umawiyy was the first dynasty of caliphs of the Prophet Muhammad who were not closely related to Muhammad himself, though they were of the same Meccan tribe, the Quraish. The first dynasty reigned from 661 to 750. Ironicalls, AbbasidHarun al-Rashid Abbasid was the dynastic name generally given to the caliphs of Baghdad, the second of the two great Sunni dynasties of the Muslim empire. The Abbasid empire was after the Umayyid Empire. The Abbasid caliphs officially based their claim tos, FatimidThe Fatimid Empire or Fatimid Caliphate ruled North Africa from A. 909 to 1171. The term "Fatimite" is sometimes used to refer to citizens of the Empire/Caliphate. The name Fatimid is derived from the name of daughter of the Prophet Muhammad, Fatima az-Zas, and Mamluks; many centuries later, it would be taken by the Ottoman Empire. The Arabs, led by T.E. Lawrence, captured it in 1917 and made it part of the Kingdom of the Hijaz. It was ceded to the British protectorate of Transjordan in 1925. It was occupied by Israel from November 1956 to January 1957.
Aqaba was a major importer of Iraqi goods in the 1980s until the Persian Gulf War.
2 External links
Jordan
Israel geography
