THE MIDDLE EAST-AN OVERVIEW

 Map produced by the Central Intelligence Agency

NAMES OF THE REGION AND COUNTRIES INCLUDED

The "Middle East" has become a common term describing the geographic area of Southwest Asia and North Africa.  However,  "Middle East" is a misnomer and its borders are arguable.  The term Middle East is a relatively new term to describe the region of Southwest Asia.  However, all the terms that have been used to describe the area clearly show a Eurocentric view of the world. During the thirteenth century, the Italian traders referred to the eastern Mediterranean as the Levant (east), this term is still used today to describe the region.  Increasing contacts between Western Europe and the Ottoman Empire during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries produced a new name for the eastern Mediterranean region.  "East" applied to the lands of the Ottoman Empire from the Balkan eastward and southeastward, whereas "Far East" designated the newly opening lands of China, Japan, and Indochina.  In the nineteenth century, "Near East" became the designation for Ottoman territories, including those in the Balkans, and "east" applied to India and adjacent areas.  In the late 1930s the British government applied "Middle East Command" to military forces in the area that extended from the central Mediterranean into the Indian subcontinent.  After the Command Headquarters was moved to Cairo, the designation for the military command came to be applied to the entire region (Held 7).  By the mid-1970s the National Geographic Society's maps of this area were titled the "Middle East."

The boundaries of the Middle East are not as easily explained.  The countries of Southwest Asia and North Africa are considered to comprise a coherent geographic region.  Historically, culturally, and physically these countries are sufficiently similar to each other, and different from surrounding areas, to be considered a region.  However, not all geography books or maps agree on the exact boundaries of this region.

Countries generally included in the Middle East are those of the Arabian Peninsula (Saudi Arabia, Oman, United Arab Emirates, Yemen, Kuwait, Qatar, and Bahrain), The North (Turkey and Iran), The Fertile Crescent (Israel, Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, and Iraq) and North Africa (Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, Algeria, and Morocco).

As it is often difficult to define the exact borders of a geographical region, some countries transitional. Thus, countries such as Afghanistan are sometimes included and other times discarded from discussions of the Middle East.  Other countries that are transitional and could be included in the Middle East are Sudan, Mauritania, Mali, Niger, Ethiopia, Somalia, Cyprus, and even some of the newly independent Central Asian republics of the former Soviet Union (Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan).

  OTHER DESCRIPTIVE NAMES OF THE THE REGION

photos from the Encyclopaedia of the Orient

The Dry World

The Arab World

The World of Islam

Oil World

These descriptions are an accurate depiction of the mental images that we have of the Middle East.  However, none of the descriptions apply to all of the Middle East.

CLIMATE
 The vast Sahara Desert in North Africa;  Rub-al-Khali (empty quarter) in the southern Saudi Arabia is the size of the state of Texas and has the world's largest single sand dune area (Held 34); the Syrian Desert; the Iranian Plateau, and other areas receive less than 4 inches of precipitation annually.   However,  most of the people of the Middle East live in favorable areas where there is an adequate water supply.  A population density map of the Middle East shows large areas of low or no population, and smaller areas of  large clusters of population.  Population is clustered around areas of precipitation and bodies of water: the coastal areas of Turkey, Israel, Lebanon, Syria, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, and Morocco; along the Caspian sea in Iran;  and along the Nile in Egypt and the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers in Iraq. The area from the mouth of the Tigris-Euphrates River to the Mediterranean coast of Syria, Lebanon, and Israel is known as the "Fertile Crescent."  In Egypt, a country of about 60 million, 95 percent of the population lives around the Nile River on 3.5 % of the total land area, giving the area a population density of more than 4,600 people per square mile (Held 74).

ETHNIC GROUPS/LANGUAGE GROUPS
Language is the principle criterion for defining ethnic groups.  Arabic is the national language of most of the countries of the Middle East and is spoken by about half the population of the region. Speaking Arabic is the hallmark of being an Arab since it is the language of theKoran, the holy book of the Muslims.  However, many other ethnic and language groups exist in the Middle East other than Arabic.  These include Hebrew, spoken by approximately 4 million people and includes mainly the Jews of Israel; Altaic Turkic Languages such as Turkish, spoken in Turkey; Azeri, spoken in northwestern Iran; Indo-European Languages such as Farsi (Persian), the primary language of Iran, Kurdish, spoken in Kurdistan, Armenian at the junction of Turkey and Iran;  and Berber which is  spoken by many millions of North Africans.

RELIGION

The overwhelming majority of the people in the Middle East are Muslims (followers of the Islam).  Within the Muslim religion there are various sects.  Major divisions of  include the Sunni, Shiite, and Druze sects.
However, other religions are also represented in the Middle East.  One obvious exception to the Muslim majority in Middle Eastern countries are the Jews of Israel..  Also, there are Christian minorities in several countries.  In Egypt there are the Coptic Christians who kept their original faith after the Muslims conquered their country.  In Lebanon and Syria there are Orthodox Christians and also Roman Catholics and Protestant Christians, who were converted by missionaries from Europe and the United States.

OIL

The Middle East contains an enormous wealth in petroleum and natural gas resources, thus giving this region a unique role in world politics.  Petroleum is the sole item produced and exported on any scale by several Middle East countries.
In the early years of oil production in the Middle East, companies operating concessions in the Middle East generally determined production and price levels.  In the 1960s, when various factors caused a reduction in prices, the governments of major producing countries met in Baghdad and created the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC). OPEC  sets oil prices and sets production quotas for individual member countries.

IMPORTANCE OF THE MIDDLE EAST

TRICONTINENTAL POSITION:   The Middle East, spanning and connecting the continents of Africa, Asia, and Europe has functioned as a tricontinental hub for thousands of years.  The physical location of the region explains why so many world trade routes, such as the medieval spice route and the modern Suez Canal route, pass through the Middle East.  It also explains why so many invading armies, such as the Mongols from Central Asia and the Crusaders from Western Europe, overran Middle East lands.  The central location coupled with the region's vast oil reserves helps explain  why the area is so often in the news.

OIL:  The enormous wealth of petroleum and natural gas found in the Middle East give this area a unique role on the world scene.  Most industrialized nations of the world rely heavily on oil and natural gas for their energy needs.  Most of the oil they need is produced in the Middle East.  As of 1991, 67 percent of the world's proved reserves of petroleum lay under the Middle East (Held 119).  Saudi Arabia alone has 25 percent of the world's reserves of oil.  Iran, Iraq, and Kuwait together account for another 25 percent (The Middle East and North Africa, 20)

CRADLE OF CIVILIZATION:  The Middle East and North Africa are known as the cradle of civilization.  The area was the home of several early societies that pioneered new ways of living and thinking.  One center of civilization was Mesopotamia - the land between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers.  Mesopotamia was a fairly flat land open to travel and invasion from many directions.  Travelers brought new ideas and carried these ideas to other parts of the world.  Another cradle of civilization developed along the Nile River in Egypt.

RELIGIOUS CENTER:  The world's three major monthesistic religions began in the Middle East.

• Judaism:   According to Hebrew belief, God made a convenant with an early Hebrew patriarch named Abraham.  Abraham promised to abandon all other gods and worship only one God.   God promised Abraham and his descendants a rich land known as Canann, located where Israel now stands.
• Christianity:  Jesus was born a Jew in Bethlehem and grew up in in Nazareth in the Galilee, the northern part of what is now modern Israel.
• Islam:  Muhammed, the founder of Islam was born in Mecca, a city that is now in Saudi Arabia.

Jerusalem is considered to be a holy city for all three religions.
Photos from theIsraeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs
THE WESTERN WALL
The Western Wall in the Old City of Jerusalem is a remnant of the Second Temple destroyed by the Romans in 70 CE.  It is Judaism's most revered site.

CHRUCH OF THE HOLY SEPULCHRE
The Church of the Holy Sepulchre contains the last five Stations of the Cross and serves as a focal point for Christian pilgrimage.  This is where Jesus is believed to have been buried and risen from the grave.

DOME OF THE ROCK
The Dome of the Rock is a mosque built in the 7th Century CE.    Muslims believe that Mohammad went on a night journey that carried him from Mecca to the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem.  From there, they claim, he rose to heaven.  This site is also believed by Christians and Muslims to where God had tested Abraham by asking him to sacrifice his son.
According to some Jews, this is the site of the Holy of Holies, the most sacred part of the Temple.

HISTORY OF THE MIDDLE EAST

PREHISTORIC, ANCIENT, and CLASSICAL PERIODS.
During theses periods the peoples of the Middle East were the most advanced in the world.  In the prehistoric, period about 8,000 BCE, they were the first to develop agriculture.  In the ancient period it was Middle Eastern people who first discovered the arts of civilizations- the building of cities, the invention of writing, and the development of political organization, of literature, and of science.

One center of civilization was Mesopotamia- the land between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers. In Sumerian society, the temple-community was the center of life.  Gradually it developed into the city-state.  The chief Sumerian city was Ur.  The ancient Sumerians worshiped many gods, believing them responsible for causing natural events.  It was not unusual for the temple of the gods to become the most important buidling in the city-states.  The Sumerians built terraced temples called ziggurats, and they functioned as administrative as well as religous centers. The Sumerians were aslo the first known civilization to develop a system of writing.  The writing took the form of wedgelike symbols on stone tablets and is called cuneiform.  The Sumerians were not the only people to build city-states in Mesoptamia and as poplation expanded as as city states mulitplied, arguments arose over the ownership of land and water resources.  At about the same time, people living on the northern fringes of the river valley began to move south. Between 2500 BCE and 500 BCE various people moved into the Tigris-Euphrates valley (The Middle East and North Africa 62). The Akkadians were the first to invade.  They were followed by the Babylonians, Assyrians, and Chaldeans.
After the fall of the Sumerian city of Ur in about 2000 BCE, a new empire in Mesopotamia arose futher north, in the city of Babylon.  One king of the Babylonians, Hammurabi, is remembered for his famous code of law.

Civilizations also emerged along the Nile River in Northern Africa. The Nile River Valley differed from Mesopotamia.  The land between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers was open to attack from all sides, while the Nile valley was protected by surrounding deserts.  The fertile river banks of the Nile were ideal for raising crops and settlements were concentrated along the banks of the Nile.  The Egyptian societies were joined together into one state by King Menes some time around 3200 BCE.  During this time there were civil wars and invasions by the Kushites who lived in what is now Sudan and by the Hyksos, an Asiatic people, who used cavalry and chariots to defeat the Egyptians.  After the Hyksos were driven out, Egypt expanded beyond the Nile valley in the hope of protecting itself from attack.  Thus the "New Kingdom" began.  The Egyptains used a type of picture writing known as hieroglyphics to record their business transactions and to write about their religion.

To the ancient Egyptians the ruler, called a pharoah, was believed to be a god.  The pyramids were built as massive tombs for the pharaoh and his family.  Building the pyramids required great engineering and mathematical skills. The Egyptians believed that the souls of the dead lived on after death.  The pharaohs would place everything they would need in the afterlife in their pyramid.

 Civilizations also developed along the Mediterranean and Aegean seas.  Among these civilizations were the Hebrews, Phoenicians, Hittites, and Lydians.  The Phoenicians were highly skilled sailors and traders and they founded many colonies along the shores of the Mediterranean.  They settled as far west as Spain and even traded as far north as England (The Middle East and North Africa 67).  In Turkey the Hittites found a way to smelt iron.  The Lydian people of western Turkey developed a system of money.  The Hebrews, who had come from Mesopotamia to Canaan, adopted the idea of monotheism.

In the classical period a number of great empires were organized which united the Middle Eastern lands. From 500 BCE to 500 CE, three  great empires held large areas of the Middle East.

• First was the Persian Empire of the 6th century BCE.  The Persians conquered and united the peoples of the Fertile-Crescent and invaded Egypt.
• Alexander the Great led Greek armies into Asia and crushed the Persians.  He then marched his troops all the way to India.  From this victory the Greek Empire in the Middle East emerged. After the death of Alexander the Great, the Middle East split into two parts.
• The western part was first conquered by the Roman Empire.  Later, it became the East Roman, or Byzantine, Empire, which was largely Greek in culture and Christian in religion.  The eastern was more Persian in culture and Zoroastrian in religion.

MEDIEVAL PERIOD

The medieval period began when the greater part of the Middle East was overrun and conquered by Arabs who spread the religion of Islam. Islam means service or submission to the will of God.  The followers of Isalm are called Muslims.  The Arabs were the first Muslims.  They were led by the Prophet Muhammad, the "Messenger of God," and his successors, who united the tribes of Arabia and then spread their faith into Iraq, Palestine, and Syria.  In little more than a hundred years after the death of Muhammad, Muslims carried their rule and their religion as far as China in the east and westward across North Africa into Spain. Unlike other invaders who destroyed whatever they found in their path, the Muslims kept much of what they conquered.  The division between the eastern and western parts of the Middle East disappeared.  Islam united the region and still today, it is the single most important factor uniting the region despite differences between Muslim sects and Arab states.

During the rule of the Abbasids the captial of the Muslim empire moved from Damascuss to  Iraq where they built a new capital city, Baghdad.  The Abbasid rule brought major changes to the Middle East.  Economic life flourished, and agricultural output increased.  The Abbasids spent money on irrigation projects and eased taxes on peasants.  The Abbasids developed a great trade network between 750 and 1500 CE.  This trade network also carried Isalmic culture to isolated peoples and brought innovations from one society to another. New products moved between Asia and Europe by way of the Middle East.  Sugar came from India and papermaking passed from Asia into the Middle East.  In time, the technique of papermaking was brought to Euorpe.  The Middle East also produced world-famous goods of its own.  Damascus was known for its linen damask, Mocha (in Yemen) for its coffee, and Baghdad for its pottery.  Perhaps the Mulsims' greates achievements were in the sciences.  In the field of medicine especially, the Muslims made outstanding contributions.

During most of the medieval period the Middle East was under the rule of the Arab Muslim conquerors.  In time, their strength declined, and they gave way to Turkish invaders from Central Asia who also eventually converted to Islam.  One branch of the Turkish people, the Slejuk Turks, captured Baghdad in 1055 and thereafter controlled most of the Middle East.

Meanwhile, from Europe came the Crusaders.  These European nobles, like King Richard the Lion-Hearted of England, were called on a mission by the pope to free the Holy Land from Muslim control.  The wars that followed lasted for almost two hundred years (1095-1290).

In the 1200s, nomads from Mongolia began a century of conquest.  The Mongol leader Genghis Khan led his army into Central Asia and then into the Middle East.  The Mongols and their successors put an end to the unity of the Middle East.  Slowly however, the Middle East began to recover from the Mongol invasion and a new people, the Ottoman Turks ,arrived by the middle of the 1500s they had taken over most of the Middle East.

THE MODERN PERIOD

The modern era began when a branch of Turks, the Ottoman Turks, crossed the Straits to Europe and captured the city of Constantinople in 1453, marking the end of the Byzantine Empire.  The Ottoman Turks then continued to expand until their empire included North Africa, southeastern Europe, and the entire Middle East except Iran. For hundreds of years the Ottoman Empire was the greatest empire in the world and was treated with respect and fear.  However, by the end of the 18th century, the Ottoman Empire was in a state of decay.  By the end of the 19th century the Turks had lost all their lands in Europe except for Constantinople.  The final blow to the Ottoman Empire was their decision to enter World War I on the side of Germany.  They were defeated and their empire was partitioned.  This partition ended the rule of empires on the Middle East as the region today is divided into many nation-states with loyalty to the nation rather than to an empire.

World War I and II shaped the modern Middle East.  Before World War I almost all of the region was ruled by the Ottoman Empire.  After World War I the victorious powers carved up the Arab lands.  Most of the present-day Arab states began as British and French creations.
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