  We report a comprehensive investigation of the low-energy properties of
antiferromagnetic quantum XXZ spin chains with aperiodic couplings. We use an
adaptation of the Ma-Dasgupta-Hu renormalization-group method to obtain
analytical and numerical results for the low-temperature thermodynamics and the
ground-state correlations of chains with couplings following several two-letter
aperiodic sequences, including the quasiperiodic Fibonacci and other
precious-mean sequences, as well as sequences inducing strong geometrical
fluctuations. For a given aperiodic sequence, we argue that in the easy-plane
anisotropy regime, intermediate between the XX and Heisenberg limits, the
general scaling form of the thermodynamic properties is essentially given by
the exactly-known XX behavior, providing a classification of the effects of
aperiodicity on XXZ chains. We also discuss the nature of the ground-state
structures, and their comparison with the random-singlet phase, characteristic
of random-bond chains.
