Middle East

I

Introduction

Middle East, region loosely defined by geography and culture, located in south-western Asia and north-eastern Africa. In most current usage, the term Middle East refers collectively to Cyprus, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Turkey, Yemen, and the states and emirates along the southern and eastern fringes of the Arabian Peninsula, namely, Bahrain, Oman, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates.

The term was coined in 1900 and in its earliest uses designated the northern approaches to India from Iran to Tibet. The Middle East therefore occupied the area between the Near East, a term used to signify the Ottoman Empire and its successor states from Serbia to Iraq, and the Far East, consisting principally of China and Japan. Following the break up of the Ottoman Empire after World War I the term Near East declined in popularity (although it has never disappeared) and parts of its domain, namely the Arab Near East, came to be described in British official terminology as the Middle East. The Middle East thus began a journey westwards and was further enlarged during World War II when, in British political and military usage, the term came to signify more or less the area defined above. The Middle East was a wholly strategic concept; countries and peoples were not grouped together because it was thought they had any cultural affinities one with another, but because outsiders, mainly the British, found it convenient to treat them as a bloc for military and political purposes. Nevertheless, as the term found currency in academic circles so elements of cultural unity were detected, in particular the circumstance that the religion of Islam was dominant. However, Islam is not, of course, confined to the Middle East even though the region saw its emergence, and, when used to designate this so-called cultural area, the unity of which is based on Islamic law and custom, the term Middle East usually embraces a much more extensive region (although one by no means coterminous with Islam), stretching from the borders of Afghanistan and Pakistan in the east through all of North Africa, including Sudan and the Maghreb, comprising Libya, Tunisia, Algeria, and Morocco.

II

Geography

Geographically, the Middle East can be divided into a northern belt consisting of Turkey and Iran, and a southern plateau region covering the Arabian Peninsula. Mountain ranges such as the Taurus, the Kuzey Anadolu Dağları (Northern Anatolian Mountains), the Elburz, and the Zagros ring vast, high, arid plateaux in the northern sector. A number of large salt-water lakes are found here, such as Lake Van and Lake Urmia. In many parts of the northern region of the Middle East there is sufficient rainfall to sustain settled agriculture and support a substantial population. It is also a region especially prone to earthquakes.

To the south, the Syrian-Arabian plateau has an arid desert climate in the interior and receives very little precipitation. Historically, this land has been frequented by nomadic Bedouin groups. Settled agriculture is carried on, especially by means of irrigation using the waters of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers (the Fertile Crescent) in Syria and Iraq and of the River Nile in Egypt and the Sudan and other rivers. Rain-fed agriculture is found along the Mediterranean coastal belt of Syria, Lebanon, and Israel and in coastal Oman and Yemen. This southern region is bordered by several large bodies of water—the Mediterranean Sea to the north-west, the Red Sea to the west, the Gulf of Aden and the Arabian Sea to the south, and the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman to the east. Narrow mountain ranges define its western, southern, and south-eastern edges.

III

Ancient Period

Since ancient times invaders and traders have crossed the area known as the Middle East in search of food, raw materials, manufactured goods, or political power. Ideas, inventions, and institutions have spread from this area to affect people in all other parts of the world, earning it the name “the Cradle of Civilization”. The earliest farms, cities, governments, law codes, and alphabets were Middle Eastern, in addition to which four of the world’s major religions—Judaism, Zoroastrianism, Christianity, and Islam—began here.

A

The Earliest Civilizations

States and governments arose as ancient peoples learnt how to tame the great rivers of the Middle East—the Nile, Tigris, Euphrates, and Indus—to support agriculture, and elaborated into religions their beliefs about the universe, human relationships, and the meaning of life and death. The first such Middle Eastern states were ancient Egypt and Sumer, which began around or before 3000 bc. Both had powerful kings, priests, scribes, and large work forces to protect the land from floods or invasions. But invaders came anyway. Sumer was captured, first by the Semitic Akkadians and Amorites from the south, and later by various Indo-European peoples from the north, leading to the formation of the Babylonian Empire in the Tigris-Euphrates region, or Mesopotamia. Egypt was occupied by a Semitic group called the Hyksos, but the Egyptians drove them out and built a powerful empire. About 1000 bc new waves of invaders unsettled the region, giving rise to new kingdoms, in Phoenicia, Israel, and other areas of the Middle East. The Phoenicians were seafaring traders who developed one of the first alphabets. The Hebrews were the first people known to believe in one all-powerful God (see Monotheism) revealed by sacred writings. The Assyrians, a warlike people who pioneered the use of iron tools and weapons, conquered a large area from their stronghold in Mesopotamia.

In the 6th century bc the Persians overran the whole Middle East and set up a system of government that became the model for all later empires. Sprawling from the Indus to the Nile, Persia could not make its subjects all think and act alike. It therefore let them keep their beliefs and practices, as long as they obeyed Persian laws, paid their taxes to the Persian state, and sent their sons to serve in Persia's armies. Although tied together by roads, a postal service, and a common governmental language, the empire's peoples still controlled most of their own affairs. The state religion was Zoroastrianism, but other faiths were tolerated. In the 4th century bc Persia, weakened by revolts and internal conflicts, was conquered by Alexander the Great of Macedonia.