Talk:Aqaba

Untitled
Aqaba/Ayla as an ancient trade port: There is considerable information. Food is a major trade item and in recent years so-called Aqaba-Ayla late Roman amphorae have appeared in a wide range of places: Red seas littoral, Eretrian & Ethiopian sites, those in Western India and now a new one in Oman. Source: M. Raith – R. Hoffbauer – H. Euler – P. Yule – K. Damgaard, The view from Ẓafār – an archaeometric study of the Aqaba late Roman period pottery complex and distribution in the 1st millennium CE, Zeitschrift für Orient-Archäologie 6, 2013, 320–50, ISBN 978-3-11-019704-4. Someone can correct the editor comment, if they want to. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Azd0815 (talk • contribs) 18:11, 15 April 2022 (UTC)

photo caption of photo of flagpole doesn't make sense
it "Resembles" ? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 128.189.255.68 (talk) 22:19, 3 December 2010 (UTC)

Removed category 'Geography of Israel' - Aqaba is not in Israel and whilst I'm not personally offended by this, I suspect others might be. I think people would object if Elat was categorised under 'Geography of Jordan'. Do others agree with my removal of the category reference? Nick Fraser 07:43, 24 Jan 2005 (UTC)

''Aqaba (Arabic: Al-'Aqabah) is a southwestern Jordanian only seaport town in bordering Elat, Israel. ''

I'm sorry, but I can't understand this at all, and I don't know what to correct it to. It's Jordanian-only? It's the only Jordanian seaport?

spelling of "Aila"
"The Ptolemaic Greeks called it Berenice, and the Romans Aila and Aelana."

The ruins of Ayla (unearthed in the 1980s by an American-Jordanian archeological team) are a few minutes walk north along the main waterfront road."

Are these the same place? --babbage 11:45, 14 Apr 2005 (UTC) YES IT IS FOR JORDAN AND ITS ONLY SEAPORT! I CANT EVEN BELIEVE THIS IS BROUGHT UP!!

Under WP policy, Aqaba (in and of itself) should be a Disambiguation Page
Under WP policy, when several places have the same name, the name itself should be a disambiguation page directing readers to diff possibilities. See, e.g., Silver Spring. Since there is Aqaba, West Bank and Aqaba, Jordan the article Aqaba should be a Disambiguation Page directing readers to the two different articles. Please do not change this w/o first discussing it and achieving consensus. SelfEvidentTruths (talk) 17:05, 30 April 2008 (UTC)


 * Yes, but please do not move content by simply copying and pasting. Instead, for next time, please move the page and preserve the edit history.  Thanks. --PFHLai (talk) 05:25, 1 May 2008 (UTC)


 * SET, not necessarily - see, for example, London, where a city is so well-known that it has to be the main article, and becomes the primary entry on the dab page. However, I don't think that applies in this case, and Aqaba should be a dab page, Aqaba (disambiguation) should be a redirect to Aqaba (to facilitate dab hatnotes) and separate articles for Aqaba, West Bank and Aqaba, Jordan and any other Aqabas that may appear.
 * --NSH001 (talk) 12:30, 2 May 2008 (UTC)


 * The city in Jordan, scene of a long documented history, battles, international summits, etc. is by far the better known Aqaba, perhaps not as better known as the English London is compared to the Canadian one, or the French Paris to the Texan town of the same name, but certainly enough better known that someone looking for Aqaba is much more likely looking for the Jordanian one and if by chance they're looking for the other one, there's a nice hat note disambiguation link to it. Carlossuarez46 (talk) 16:35, 2 May 2008 (UTC)
 * The fact that one is an international port city of 70,000 people whilst the other is a village of 300 also demonstrates that the norm of WP is to do a hat dab or a separate dab page. While the obvious large cities remain safe, we still cannot have every geographical entry of a medium sized place turned into a dab solely because some smaller place shares its name. Carlossuarez46 (talk) 16:41, 2 May 2008 (UTC)
 * Aqaba is not synonymous with Jordan in the same way as Paris is with France, or Rome with Italy. It's not uncommon in cases where there are two places for their to be a disambig page that favors neither. See Sebastia for example. It seems Wiki practice defers to capital cities (such as in the case of Tripoli, which defaults to Libyan capital, listing the other options in a hat-note) but that does not apply here given that Aqaba is not the capital of either Jordan or the West Bank.  T i a m u t talk 20:58, 2 May 2008 (UTC)
 * Actually, Tiamut, that's not such a good example, as Sebastia is not the modern name of the Turkish city (pop. 296,000). Maybe a better example is Newcastle, a dab page despite the fact that the main city has a population of 190,000(city), 260,000(local authority area) or 799,000(whole conurbation).
 * --NSH001 (talk) 21:54, 2 May 2008 (UTC)
 * Hmmm, on closer examination, maybe not. Newcastle is a dab page because there are two Newcastles of comparable size, one in England, one in Australia (plus many others). --NSH001 (talk) 22:14, 2 May 2008 (UTC)


 * Well I'm not deeply committed either way. The hatnote solution works fine for me. I'm more concerned that the changes snd decision-making is done in a way that fosters consensus. Editors and admins were doing page moves and deletions, seemingly at cross-purposes, and with little central discussion. So what do others think? Hat-note or disambig? What is best practice? Does it really matter? Should we simply move on?  T i a m u t talk 22:35, 2 May 2008 (UTC)


 * This is a matter of fine judgement. For a city to be the prime entry, it has to be very clear that it merits such status - not just a balance of evidence, but that no-one is likely to dispute it. That's why I said above that Aqaba should probably be a dab page. However, this is a borderline case, and I don't think it's worth the hassle of moving it back again. You're right that it should have been discussed first, and consensus reached before moving/deleting. As you say, best to move on.
 * --NSH001 (talk) 20:58, 3 May 2008 (UTC)


 * Not even close. Take for example Liverpool, which is properly not a dab but the large English port (430,000 people) rather than the dabbing the city in Australia (150,000 people) 3:1 ratio. Take Birmingham, which properly is not a dab but the large English city (1,000,000 people) using a hat dab for the Alabama city (240,000 people) 4:1 ratio. Cambridge correctly is the English university town (108,000 people) rather than the Massachusetts version of the same (101,000 people). Essentially 1:1 ratio. And first in time doesn't always determine these things: Boston points to the Massachusetts city (590,000 people) not the one after which it was named in Lincolnshire (35,000 people). In any event a quick google search for Aqaba shows in the first few pages, nearly all that I can figure are discussing the Jordanian one. Our sister Wikipedias in foreign languages have articles for the Jordanian Aqaba in Arabic, Bulgarian, Czech, Danish, German, Estonian, Greek, Spanish, Esperanto, Farsi, French, Indonesian, Italian, Hebrew, Dutch, Japanese, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Slovak, Finnish, Swedish, Turkish, Ukrainian, and Chinese - and the West Bank Aqaba in none.  I cannot read the Arabic, Farsi, Japanese, or Chinese, but of all the other languages, except Ukrainian, the article for the Jordanian Aqaba is at "Aqaba" in their language (without further qualification). In Ukrainian it is designated "port", to distinguish the gulf, which is at "Aqaba (gulf)" (uk:Акаба (затока)). So, the rest of the encyclopedia community at WP has no hesitation in knowing what should be at Aqaba: the Jordanian port. If someone wants to set up a dab where a well-known city gets dabbed with less known places 1/200th the size, even with an exception for a nation's capital, then nearly all large or historically important non-capital cities (Liverpool, Birmingham, Venice, Naples, Corinth, Sparta, Odessa, Mecca, Alexandria, and Bethlehem), will be dab pages making the encyclopedia less usable. Carlossuarez46 (talk) 23:24, 5 May 2008 (UTC)
 * Looks like we're in "violent agreement", then [[Image:smile.png|15px]] NSH001 (talk) 09:56, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

Ayla and Elath
I have restored the quotation from 1 Kings 9:26 to talk about "Eloth" rather than "Ayla", backing out a change that was part of a contribution made by in August 2010.

Various versions of the text can be browsed at.

The KJV, JPS 1917 , and NASB all have "Eloth"; the NIV has "Elath" , which is also found in some other verses -- see eg the entry in Strong's concordance. The two are probably plural and singular variants of the same name.

The literal Hebrew is aleph-lamed-vav-tav ; in present-day use tav is pronounced with a hard 't', rather that 'th', so that's why the new Israeli city was called "Eilat" rather than "Eilath".

In the Greek of the Septuagint it gets rendered Ailath (Αιλαθ), and in the Latin of the Vulgate becomes Ahilam , the nominative form Ahila presumably just being a variant of what would at that time have been the contemporary Aila or Ayla as mentioned in the article.

Given the above, while the Vulgate does use a variant of Ayla, it seems more appropriate for our quote to use Eloth, being the form used by most English translations and closer to the original Hebrew. Jheald (talk) 18:02, 4 February 2013 (UTC)

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Aqaba railway?
"the Hejaz railway in 1908, connecting the port to Damascus and Medina.[33]"? In the "Hejaz railway" article there is no connection with Aqaba. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 158.227.73.176 (talk) 17:38, 11 February 2019 (UTC)


 * Correct, and the source doesn't say it either. Probably the intended meaning is that material from the port could be transported overland to the railway and via the railway to Damascus or Medina. That would have been a much easier journey in total than before the railway was built.  But we can't use this without a proper source. Zerotalk 02:22, 12 February 2019 (UTC)

Ancient Near East periods
We need a definition for what we're talking about. As of now, we have a hodgepodge of sites. Elath is not Tell el-Kheleifeh and might or might not be at the site of Roman Aila (the Early Muslim fortified settlement is for instance outside & south of it). Good that nobody added Ezion Geber to the stew.

The "Beach of History" source is far below standard, needs to be replaced along with that entire material - and has special technical demands, without which it doesn't open.

WP-standard, reliable sources are urgently and sorely needed. Arminden (talk) 18:01, 29 January 2021 (UTC)

Religious schools
If the city has “multiple Christian schools,” what is the justification for mentioning just one of them? If that school has some special status there should be text about it. Otherwise, name either all of them or none of them. 伟思礼 (talk) 22:51, 23 February 2023 (UTC)

Aqaba airport distance to Ramon
20 miles apart but only 7 miles by great circle route? That's absurd. 2600:100B:B134:22FA:0:3:E248:BA01 (talk) 02:16, 8 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Google says 25km by road and 13km in a straight line. Zerotalk 03:36, 9 January 2024 (UTC)
 * The article states 30km and 13km "great circle distance" but does not specify road and straight-line. First, at that short distance the difference between straight line (on a map) and great circle (straight line on the surface of a sphere) is practically zero. I could edit the article myself but in addition to deleting the great circle reference as misleading and superfluous I would need to know whether the distance is being measured from the centers of the runways, closest points on the property lines, or closest points of the controlled airspace. Suggestions? 2600:100B:B134:22FA:0:3:E248:BA01 (talk) 17:12, 9 January 2024 (UTC)
 * I rewrote that passage based on the sources. Zerotalk 10:29, 10 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Thank you. Off subject, but the comment regarding the statement about Nabatean influence in the history/Roman period does indeed deserve discussion.  I know it belongs in the Petra article but I know from personal experience that you can walk around Petra and see a striking and obvious difference between the Nabatean (building fronts? monuments? structures?) artifacts and the Roman artifacts. Nabateans had strictly geometric, often stair-step, ornamentation where the Romans used fauna-flora likenesses. It's apparent that the Romans built their own stuff while leaving the Nabatean stuff alone. I have yet to see an adequate analysis of what was obvious to me. 2600:100B:B134:22FA:0:3:E248:BA01 (talk) 17:01, 10 January 2024 (UTC)