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.

B.

Hellenistic and Roman Times

Alexander's conquest started a millennium in which the Middle East was part of the Hellenistic (culturally Greek) world. Greek culture was mixed with local ways, as Alexander borrowed ideas and customs, as well as clerks and soldiers, from the Egyptians, Mesopotamians, and Persians. Egypt’s port, Alexandria, became a centre of trade and culture, a lasting monument to the conqueror who founded it and after whom it was named. As Macedonian power waned, the Romans conquered most of the Middle East, but Persia remained independent under two ruling dynasties: the Parthians (248 bc-ad 226) and the Sasanians (ad 226-641). Roman rule brought uniform laws, good roads, and trade to Egypt, Syria, and Asia Minor. Several Middle Eastern religions—Judaism, then Christianity, and the cult of Mithraism—competed for adherents throughout the Roman Empire. Christianity prevailed in the early 4th century ad. Constantine the Great, the first Christian Roman emperor, stressed the empire’s Eastern ties by moving his capital to Byzantium, a port on the Bosporus. Renamed Constantinople, it became a great city and was the capital of the Eastern Roman, or Byzantine, Empire for more than a thousand years.

IV.

Islamic Period

Early in the 7th century, Muhammad, a charismatic religious leader, proclaimed himself a prophet of God to the nomadic peoples of the Arabian Peninsula. He founded a community of believers who called themselves Muslims (“those who submit or surrender” to God's will) and their faith Islam (“submission” or “surrender”). By the time of the Prophet’s death (632), his doctrines, based on Judaeo-Christian and Arabian traditions, had been widely accepted among the Arabs.

A.

Arab Dominion

Muhammad’s successors, called caliphs, led the peoples of the Arabian Peninsula in a series of thrusts into Syria, Mesopotamia, Persia, and Egypt, expanding greatly the realm of Islam. These Arab conquests were aided by the anger of many Middle Eastern Christians, Jews, and Zoroastrians at the persecution they had suffered under the Byzantine Empire (which lost much of its territory) or Sasanian Persia (which was totally absorbed by the Arabs). The early caliphs tolerated non-Muslims, as long as they paid taxes and did not rebel. Few of the conquered peoples converted to Islam at once, but centuries of intermarriage and conversion eventually made the area predominantly Muslim.

The Caliphate was controlled by two successive dynasties: the Umayyads (661-750), who governed from Damascus, and the Abbasids (750-1258), who usually ruled in Baghdad. With help from the peninsular Arab peoples, the Umayyads conquered North Africa, Spain, and Central Asia. The Abbasids promoted commerce and culture, giving non-Arab converts equal status with Arab Muslims, but they lost control of the outlying areas. New dynasties arose. By 945 the Abbasids no longer controlled even their own capital. Iranians and Turks took over, as the Arabs returned to the desert. Despite political division, however, manufacturing and trade flourished, along with scholarship, the sciences, and the arts.

B.

Turkish and Iranian Hegemony

Beginning in the 10th century, the Middle East was invaded by Turks from Central Asia. They adopted the faith, laws, and culture of local Muslims and soon governed most of their lands. One dynasty, the Ghaznavids (962-1186), spread Islam throughout India. Another, the Seljuks (1040-1302), took Asia Minor from the Byzantines in 1071. The Turkish invasion helped spark the Crusades, bringing European forces to the eastern shore of the Mediterranean and to Jerusalem to fight and pillage in the name of Christianity. More harmful to Islam was the 13th-century Mongol invasion, which destroyed much of Iraq and Iran. A group of slave-soldiers of Turkish and Circasian origin, the Mamelukes of Egypt, stopped the Mongol advance in 1260.

Although the Mamelukes and various Mongol groups formed powerful states in the following centuries, the greatest and longest lasting was the Ottoman Empire. Starting in the western hills of Asia Minor, Turkish peoples led by Osman and his sons raided and seized Byzantine lands, first in Asia, then in south-eastern Europe. In 1453 they took Constantinople. Renamed İstanbul, it became the capital for the descendants of Osman, or Ottomans. Their conquests continued until their empire stretched from Hungary in the north to Yemen in the south, and from Algeria in the west to the Iranian border in the east. They tried to conquer Iran as well, but were repelled by that country's Safavid dynasty (1502-1736).

C.

European Domination

After the 16th century, the great Muslim empires began to decline. The Ottomans lost European lands to Austria and Russia; the Safavids lost their entire country. Iran’s revival in the 18th century under Nadir Shah was followed by years of troubles. The Ottoman Empire endured partly because Russia and the other European powers could not agree on how to divide it. With some success, 19th-century Ottoman rulers tried to modernize their army and administration, and their legal and educational systems. Many Muslims, suspicious of innovations, resisted the changes. Other Muslims were influenced by the nationalistic and democratic doctrines of the Europeans.

The Ottoman province in which modernization went furthest, initially, was Egypt. Muhammad Ali, who ruled the country as viceroy from 1805 to 1849, introduced a programme of military modernization and revolutionized Egypt’s economy, introducing such crops as sugar and cotton, installing mills and factories, building roads and canals, and importing Western technicians, teachers, and soldiers. Cotton cultivation remained the mainspring of Egypt’s new economy but military modernization was halted after 1841. Under Muhammad Ali’s successors Egypt borrowed extensively in Europe, became unable to pay the interest on the debt, and eventually lost control of its own affairs. In 1882 Egypt fell under British control.

Iran lagged behind in military and economic modernization. The struggle by Britain and Russia in the late 19th and early 20th centuries to control Iran, or, more accurately, to prevent the country falling entirely under the control of the other, resulted in the country being divided into spheres of influence. Iranian nationalists and other critics, angered at foreign intervention and at the corruption of Iran’s weak Qajar rulers, in 1906 forced the reigning Shah to establish a national assembly which drew up a semi-liberal constitution, although this was soon overthrown.

During the 19th century the interests of European powers in the Middle East changed. The Eastern Question of the 18th century had been concerned with the efforts of Austria and Russia to extend their territories at the expense of the Ottoman lands in Europe. However, the invasion of Egypt by Napoleon Bonaparte in 1798 and Russia’s annexation of Georgia in 1800 drew attention to the fate of the Asian lands and these became of increasing importance during the 19th century. The main focus of the Eastern Question continued to be the fate of the Balkans and control of the Straits of the Bosporus and the Dardanelles. A new factor was British concern for the security of the routes to India and its other possessions east of Suez. This concern contributed to Britain’s interest in the Suez Canal after 1869 and the security of that canal became, with the Straits, one of the two main strategic problems of the Middle East. Two other major Middle Eastern assets were the Ottoman debt, in which France was deeply concerned, and oil, which was developed in Russian territory at Baku and in south-western Iran, an enterprise in which Britain became especially interested.

D.

The 20th Century

D.1.

The Impact of World War I

When the Ottoman Empire sided with Germany in World War I, Russia staked its claim to İstanbul and the Straits and, together with Britain and France, drew up plans for the partition of the Ottoman Empire. According to these plans France would gain control of Syria and Lebanon, and Britain of Mesopotamia and Palestine. Russia fought the Ottomans in eastern Anatolia and occupied the northern part of neutral Iran. Britain and France attacked at the Dardanelles and Britain also repelled an Ottoman assault on Egypt and launched a campaign in Iraq. After 1916, as Russia progressively withdrew from the war and France was preoccupied with the Western Front, the main burden of fighting in the Middle East fell upon Britain, who launched major, successful campaigns in Iraq and in Palestine and Syria.

A minor theatre of operations was Arabia, where Britain found it convenient to encourage the Sharif of Mecca to revolt against the Ottomans and offered an undertaking to support the creation of an independent Arab state or states in Syria and Palestine. Although efforts were made to harmonize the undertakings to the Sharif with the agreement with France there was considerable possibility for conflict. A further source of potential conflict arose from a pro-see Zionist British undertaking to support the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people subject to certain conditions—the Balfour Declaration of 1917.

The war ended in defeat for the Ottomans and victory for Britain and France. It now became a question of implementing the various schemes of partition. Russia’s claims had lapsed, but the United States, although not a party to the war against the Ottomans, was a powerful presence at the Peace Conference and its weight was thrown on the side of self-determination, although this was an elusive concept when applied to the Middle East in 1919. The scheme of settlement embodied in the Treaty of Sèvres (1920) was overthrown by Turkish resistance and the Republic of Turkey emerged in the northern part of the Middle East. In Iran the British scheme to gain control over that state through an agreement was also hindered, partly by Iranian resistance, partly by Russian intervention, and partly by the unwillingness of the British government to make the effort required to support the agreement. In Egypt an uprising frustrated British plans to increase control and in 1922 Britain was forced to concede independence to Egypt, subject to several reservations. Much of Arabia, apart from the Persian Gulf and Aden, was left to its own devices and only in Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, Transjordan (now Jordan), and Iraq was more or less full European control established by Britain and France through the League of Nations mandate system. In those areas the boundaries of the new states and their forms of government were imposed by Britain and France and the Arab Middle East effectively reshaped.

D.2.

The Passing of European Domination in the Middle East

In Turkey and Iran stable states committed to programmes of military, political, and economic modernization were created between the wars under the leadership of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk and Reza Shah Pahlavi respectively. Gradually these states freed themselves from some surviving elements of European control, including the capitulations and European interference on behalf of minorities. Turkey also secured a more favourable regime for the Straits. Both states, however, continued to fear Russia and sought international support, from Germany as well as from Britain and France, to balance that threat. Iran also remained suspicious of British activities in the Persian Gulf, of British oil interests, and of British influence on the people of south-western Iran.

In World War II both states found their independence threatened again. Iran was occupied by Britain and the USSR and Reza Shah was forced to abdicate in 1941. After the war Iran was obliged to endure considerable pressure from Russia and Britain for some years and turned to the United States for help. Turkey came under pressure from both sides but maintained its neutrality until the German defeat was inevitable. Turkey suffered for its wartime attitude when the USSR endeavoured to force it to agree to accept Soviet demands for a new regime at the Straits but survived the pressure with American assistance.

In their mandated territories Britain and France encountered demands from Arab nationalists and others for greater independence. Following an uprising in 1920 Britain decided to try to safeguard her interests in Iraq by treaty with an independent state rather than by mandate. A king was chosen in 1921, a treaty signed in 1922, and Iraq became independent in 1932. Britain retained bases in Iraq and continued to supply advisers until its influence was brought to an end after the overthrow of the monarchy in 1958.

The evolution of Transjordan was similar but slower; not until 1946 was the mandate replaced by a treaty of alliance and Transjordan made independent. Palestine underwent a different evolution. British rule provided an umbrella under which Zionist immigration took place until Jews constituted some 30 per cent of the population. Arab opposition was strong and often violent and after the failure of several attempts to achieve agreement between the two communities Britain referred the future of Palestine to the United Nations (UN) in 1947. The UN opted for a partition which was rejected by the Palestinian Arabs and by neighbouring Arab states and war ensued in 1948 as a result of which Palestine was divided between the new state of Israel (which won the largest share) and Jordan (which acquired what came to be called the West Bank with old Jerusalem). Egypt was left in control of Gaza.

After experiencing episodes of armed conflict France also decided to abandon any attempt to maintain tight control over Syria and Lebanon and sought treaty arrangements. Treaties were signed with both states in 1936 but were not ratified and it was not until World War II that France eventually relinquished control of Syria and Lebanon under pressure from nationalists and from Britain. The two states finally achieved independence in 1946. French interests in the Middle East (although not in North Africa) were then almost extinguished.

British interests lasted a little longer. The nationalization of the Anglo-Iranian oil companies’ interests in Iran in 1951 destroyed one of Britain’s major interests in the Middle East and the evacuation of the Suez Canal Base by agreement with Egypt in 1955 another. Britain withdrew from its last major Middle Eastern commitments in 1971 when it ended the effective protectorate of the states of Trucial Oman (the United Arab Emirates). The Anglo-French swansong in the Middle East was the abortive Suez Crisis of 1956 following Egypt’s nationalization of the Suez Canal Company. Thereafter, the two states would effectively be subordinate to the United States in the region.

D.3.

Regional Conflicts 1948 to the Present

There have been two main types of conflict in the Middle East during this period: internal and interstate, although the two often overlapped as in Lebanon where a civil war raged from 1975 to 1989 and in which Syria, Israel, the United States, and France intervened at different times with force and other Arab states and Iran intervened by diplomacy and in other ways. Similarly, Egypt intervened with troops and Saudi Arabia with money in North Yemen during the civil war that followed the revolution of 1962. On the other hand, in the brief civil war in united Yemen in 1994 the two sides were left to settle the matter themselves. Also, in the long Kurdish insurgency in Turkey from 1989 to 2000 Turkey was left alone despite much international complaint. The persistent Arab-Israeli dispute is described in the following section; and the abortive Suez Crisis of 1956, fought to overthrow President Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt, has already been described.

Of other interstate conflicts the Iran-Iraq War of 1980-1988 (with its estimated 1 million casualties) stands out as much the largest conflict in the region, indeed, in terms of casualties as the greatest interstate conflict since World War II. Iraq was involved in two other wars (apart from her minor role in the Arab-Israeli War of 1948). These were the Gulf War of 1990-1991 in which she attacked and annexed Kuwait and was expelled by an extensive international coalition led by the United States; and the War on Iraq of 2003 when the United States and its allies overthrew the regime of Saddam Hussein. This last intervention, in particular, reflected the changed international situation of the Middle East since the break-up of the Soviet Union in 1991 and the replacement of the bipolar system, which had hitherto cast its influence over the Middle East, by the dominance of a single superpower. It is worth noting that the Middle East became in the second half of the 20th century one of the most heavily armed regions of the world.

D.4.

The Arab-Israeli Dispute

Since 1967 it has become common to use the term Middle East often in a very restricted sense to encompass the relations of Israel and her Arab neighbours. The unsolved problem of the Arab refugees who fled Israeli-controlled territories in 1948, the refusal of the Arab states to accept Israel and the unsatisfied ambitions of Zionists led to constant friction and further wars in 1956, 1967, and 1973 as a result of which Israel came to occupy and retain the whole of mandatory Palestine, together with the Golan Heights (taken from Syria in 1967) and (for a time) the Sinai desert (taken from Egypt in 1967 and returned after the peace agreement of 1979 (see Camp David Accords)). In 1982 Israel also invaded Lebanon, withdrawing largely in 1985 and finally in 2000. No peace was made with Syria and Lebanon (the treaty of 1983 with the latter state was abortive), although a peace treaty was signed in 1994 between Israel and Jordan. Israel also encountered increasing difficulties in her relations with the Palestinians of the occupied territories of the West Bank and Gaza. The Palestinians sought an end to the occupation and the establishment of a Palestinian state. Partly for reasons of security, partly because of an unwillingness to relinquish the Jewish settlements in the occupied territories, and partly because of the Zionist claim to all of Palestine Israel would not agree.

In 1987 a Palestinian uprising which came to be known as the first “intifada” broke out. The intifada was one factor in producing the Oslo Accords signed between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organisation in 1993. The Oslo Accords were embodied in a subsequent peace agreement that provided for a staged movement towards a final settlement (the exact terms of which were not agreed) of the dispute over Palestine. In the first stage a Palestine national authority was established with limited autonomy in parts of the occupied territories. Negotiations continued intermittently and approached success at Camp David in 2000 but major issues remained unresolved. The negotiations were abandoned and in October 2000 the second (al-Aqsa) intifada began and violence came once more to dominate the relations between Israel and the Palestinians.

D.5.

Changes in the Middle East during the 20th Century

Economically, the main feature was the rapid growth of population, which led to a fivefold increase in the number of people and a large predominance of the young. Agricultural employment declined from 75 per cent to 2 per cent and many people moved to the towns and cities, where more than half of the population lived in 2000 compared to no more than one fifth in 1900. Although oil production began in Iran in 1912 and in Iraq in 1927 oil did not come to play a major part in the lives of most of the people of the region until the 1960s, although since that period state revenues in several countries and investment have depended to a considerable extent on receipts from oil. Middle Eastern oil became of great importance to the rest of the world: by 1973, 40 per cent of oil production came from the region. Socially, one of the most striking trends has been the growth of education. In 1900 probably no more than 2 per cent of the population attended schools and 10 per cent was literate. By 2000 the corresponding figures were in the region of 20 per cent and 75 per cent respectively, and there were over 100 universities, nearly all of them grossly overcrowded.

Whereas the first part of the century had seen an extension of secular styles and attitudes the last 30 years or so witnessed an insistence on Islamic codes of behaviour and dress; veils and beards returned throughout the region. Islam also became a much more prominent feature of political life, most notably in Iran where the overthrow of the Pahlavi monarchy was followed by the establishment of an Islamic republic, but in every Muslim country political parties demanded the implementation of Islamic law and greater prominence for Islam in education. These Islamist parties or movements came to form the principal opposition to the secular regimes which had dominated the Middle East since the end of European rule, including the Atatürk regime in Turkey and the revolutionary regimes in the Arab world (of which that established in Egypt in 1952 is the exemplar, but which also included those in Syria, Iraq, and elsewhere). The secular regimes had professed nationalism as their ideology and although this had not resulted in the wider unity hoped for by the Arab nationalists, it had led to some increased affection for the country or state in which people lived or occasionally (as in the case of some Kurds and others) the state in which they hoped to live. The greatest change in the political sphere, however, was the growth of the power of the state itself, irrespective of the regime that controlled it. Whereas in 1900 the state had interfered relatively little in the lives of the people of the Middle East, by 2000 its influence was pervasive in every sphere of life.