County functioning within Middle Eastern city (6)
I believe the answer is:
tyrone
'county' is the definition.
(county of Northern Ireland)
'functioning within middle eastern city' is the wordplay.
'functioning' becomes 'on' (I've seen this in other clues).
'within' means one lot of letters goes inside another.
'middle eastern city' becomes 'tyre' (I can't explain this - if you can you should believe this answer much more).
'on' going within 'tyre' is 'TYRONE'.
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for tyrone that I've seen before include "County of N. Ireland" , "An Ulster county" , "Omagh its chief town" , "Irish county" , "Traditional county of Northern Ireland" .)