I | INTRODUCTION |
Middle
East, geographic and cultural region located in southwestern Asia and
northeastern Africa. The geopolitical term Middle East, first coined in
1902 by United States naval officer Alfred Thayer Mahan, originally referred to
the Asian region south of the Black Sea between the Mediterranean Sea to the
west and India to the east. In modern scholarship, and for the purposes of this
article, the term refers collectively to the Asian countries of Bahrain, Cyprus,
Iran, Iraq, Israel (and the Israeli-occupied West Bank), Jordan, Kuwait,
Lebanon, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates, and
Yemen, and the African country of Egypt. A broader, more cultural definition
might include the Muslim countries of Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, Sudan,
Afghanistan, and Pakistan.
The area is mostly arid with hot, dry summers
and cool winters. It contains about 65 percent of the world’s oil reserves,
primarily in the states bordering the Persian Gulf. Oil is the region's main
export. Some Middle Eastern countries are extremely rich because of their oil
reserves. Others with high populations and no significant oil resources (notably
Egypt and Yemen) are considerably poorer.
The first civilizations of the Middle East,
which grew in the valleys of the Nile, Tigris, and Euphrates rivers, are among
the oldest in the world. Alphabets, law codes, and cities all began in the
Middle East, as did the world’s three great monotheistic religions, Judaism
(13th century bc), Christianity
(1st century to 4th century ad)
and Islam (7th century ad). Of the
three, Islam continues to mark the region most profoundly. More than 90 percent
of the people of the Middle East are Muslims.
The Middle East is an area of frequent
conflict, largely for reasons embedded in its recent past. For example, the
conflict between Arabs and Israelis over the land in Palestine (present-day
Israel and the Israeli-occupied territories) is more a product of 20th-century
developments rather than any age-old hostility between Muslims and Jews (see
Arab-Israeli Conflict). Likewise, although there have been tensions between
Persians and Arabs in the past, the Iran-Iraq War between 1980 and 1988 was more
a result of political tensions and border disputes in the second half of the
20th century. Islamic militancy, which has produced deadly results in Egypt,
Iran, Israel, and Lebanon, is a consequence of late 20th-century problems such
as widespread unemployment, political and socioeconomic turmoil, and an
overarching sense of despair rather than a result of any violent or extremist
characteristics inherent to Islam.
II | LAND AND RESOURCES |
The total land area of the Middle East is 7.3
million sq km (2.8 million sq mi). Much of the region consists of flat plains or
plateaus. Extensive desert areas stretch across the southern reaches, including
the Libyan Desert and Arabian Desert in Egypt, the Rub‘ al Khali in southern
Saudi Arabia, and the Syrian Desert at the junction of Saudi Arabia, Jordan,
Syria, and Iraq. Northern mountainous areas include the Taurus Mountains in
Turkey, the Elburz Mountains and Zagros Mountains in Iran, and the mountains of
northern Iraq. Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, and Israel contain the northernmost
extension of the Great Rift Valley, a depression that extends from the Middle
East to southeastern Africa. The Caspian Sea, the largest inland sea in the
region and the only one of any economic significance, indents Iran’s northern
border. The area is particularly susceptible to earthquakes, which have caused
massive devastation in the second half of the 20th century, especially in Iran
and Turkey.
A | Climate |
Rainfall and temperature vary considerably
across the Middle East and even within countries. For example, the Caspian Sea
coast of northern Iran receives up to 2000 mm (80 in) of rain a year, while the
desert regions of Iran may receive no rain at all for several years.
Temperatures also vary by region. Ankara in the central plateau region of Turkey
averages 0°C (32°F) in January and 23°C (73°F) in July. In contrast, low-lying
coastal regions of the Arabian Peninsula (the large peninsula south of Jordan
and Iraq) and those bordering the Mediterranean Sea experience much more
moderate winter temperatures: Jiddah in western Saudi Arabia averages 24°C
(75°F) in January and 31°C (89°F) in July. Lowland desert areas in the interior
regions of the Arabian Peninsula, Iran, Iraq, and Egypt experience periods of
extreme heat in the summer, with temperatures often reaching 45°C (113°F) or
higher.
B | Water Resources |
Apart from the Nile River, which provides
much of the water supply and irrigation systems of Egypt, and the Tigris and
Euphrates rivers, which supply Iraq, Syria, and Turkey, there are no major
rivers or navigable waterways. The Sea of Galilee (Lake Tiberias) in northern
Israel, fed from the north by the shallow, unnavigable Jordan River, provides
Israel’s main source of fresh water. With such a limited water supply, access to
water for drinking, irrigation, and hydroelectricity has become increasingly
crucial in many parts of the Middle East.
The control of water resources is a
frequent source of political tension. When Israel occupied the West Bank in 1967
and parts of southern Lebanon in 1982, it gained control of the upper
tributaries of the Jordan River, the Sea of Galilee, and the Līţānī and Bāniyās
rivers. Also, the Israeli government gives Israeli settlers permission to drill
new water wells in the West Bank, but denies Palestinian residents the same
right. Any peace agreement between Arabs and Israelis resulting in full or
partial surrender of Israeli authority over this area will have to address the
issue of control over water supplies.
A similar conflict persists over access to
the waters of the Euphrates River, which rises in Turkey and flows across
northeastern Syria before entering Iraq. All three countries depend on these
waters for irrigation and hydroelectric power. As part of a major water
development project begun in 1984, Turkey built two large dams on the Euphrates,
substantially reducing the amount of water available to Syria for power
generation. A dam in Syria further reduces Iraq’s water supply, adversely
affecting the country’s agriculture. The situation nearly led to a war between
Iraq and Syria in 1975.
Environmental factors can also affect water
supply. From the late 1980s to the 1990s droughts in Ethiopia reduced the flow
of the Nile, Egypt's only source of water. Rapid growth in Egypt's population
over the same period compounded the water shortage. The Aswān High Dam in
southern Egypt, opened in 1971, has decreased annual flooding of the delta
region at the Nile’s outlet to the Mediterranean Sea, resulting in coastal
erosion and increased salt content of the soil.
III | PEOPLE |
The Middle East has a population (1997
estimate) of about 291.9 million. Population density varies greatly throughout
the region. In most countries, there has been a steady migration of people from
rural to urban areas since the 1940s, so today the majority of people live in
urban areas. In Iraq, for example, about 61 percent of the population lived in
rural areas in 1957, compared with 25 percent in 1996. Similarly, half of all
workers in Lebanon were employed in agriculture in 1959; by the mid-1990s, only
about 8 percent of the workforce had jobs in agriculture. The largest cities in
the region are Cairo, Egypt (6.8 million), Tehrān, Iran (6.5 million), Baghdād,
Iraq (3.8 million), and İstanbul, Turkey (7.6 million).
The population of the Middle East tripled
between 1950 and 1994 primarily because of the introduction of modern medicine
and agricultural techniques from Western nations. Modern medicine decreased
mortality rates, while new agricultural techniques improved food productivity.
The growth rate remained high by world standards through the mid-1990s with an
average annual rate of 2.4 percent between 1990 and 1995. Infant mortality rates
vary greatly from country to country in the 1990s, though overall they have
improved considerably since the 1970s. This variation reflects the different
levels of wealth and development in countries of the Middle East. In the highly
developed country of Israel the infant mortality rate was 8 deaths per 1000 live
births in 1997. By comparison, the rate per 1000 live births was 71 in
less-developed Egypt and 75 in Yemen.
A | Ethnic Groups and Languages |
Arabs make up the majority of the people
of the Middle East, accounting for almost the entire populations of Egypt,
Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, and the states of the Arabian Peninsula, and for
three-fourths of the population of Iraq. The Arabs originated in the Arabian
Peninsula and began to migrate northwards and eastwards in the 5th and 6th
centuries ad. The rate of
migration accelerated after the birth and spread of Islam in the 7th century.
Under Arab influence, peoples in the surrounding areas gradually adopted the
Arabic language, and even more gradually adopted Islam. Arabic, a Semitic
language, serves as a unifying bond among Arabs throughout the region.
The Turks, another broad, linguistically
related group of peoples, reside primarily in Turkey and Iran. About 80 percent
of the population of Turkey, and most of the present inhabitants of Anatolia
(the Asian portion of Turkey), are descended from Central Asian tribes that
migrated west between the 11th and 13th centuries. These people speak Turkish,
one of a group of Turkic languages spoken between southeastern Europe and
northwestern China (see Altaic Languages). In Iran, about one quarter of
the population speaks one of the Turkic languages, especially Azeri. A few
hundred thousand Turkmens in northern Iraq also speak a Turkic language.
The pre-Islamic people of Iran, the
Persians, make up about 60 percent of the present-day population of Iran. The
Persians descended from Indo-European peoples who entered the country from
Central Asia during the 2nd century bc.
These people speak Persian, an Indo-Iranian language.
Members of another ethnic group, the
Kurds, reside in the Middle Eastern countries of Turkey, Iran, Iraq, and Syria,
as well as in several of the former republics of the Union of Soviet Socialist
Republics (USSR). They speak Kurdish, another Indo-Iranian language. The largest
concentration of Kurds is in Turkey, where they make up about 19 percent of the
population.
The Jewish population of Israel
constitutes an important cultural group in the Middle East. Although about half
of the current residents were born in Israel, their parents and grandparents
came from more than 100 countries throughout the world, primarily in the 20th
century. From diverse backgrounds, this group nevertheless shares in common the
Jewish tradition and the modern Hebrew language.
B | Religion |
Islam is the predominant religion in the
Middle East. More than 90 percent of the area’s population are Muslims.
Christians form the next largest group, with about 4 percent of the population,
and Jews make up about 2 percent of the population. Muslims explicitly recognize
that Judaism and Christianity preceded their faith, and therefore regard
Christians and Jews as “peoples of the book”—that is, groups with written
scriptures that should be free to practice their religion.
Islam is divided into two major groups,
Sunni Islam and Shia Islam. The Sunni Muslims are by far the most numerous, both
in the Middle East and in the Muslim world in general. The Sunnis and Shias
separated over the issue of supreme authority after the death of the Prophet
Muhammad in 632. The majority of Muslims, the Sunnis, believe the first four
caliphs, all of whom belonged to Muhammad’s tribe, were the prophet’s rightful
successors. A minority, the Shias, believe that Muhammad’s nearest male heir,
his cousin and son-in-law Ali, was intended to succeed Muhammad. Shias accept
only Ali’s descendants (imams) as legitimate rulers. The Shias themselves are
divided into several sects, which differ over how many of Ali’s male descendants
should be recognized as leaders of the Islamic community. Of Middle Eastern Shia
Muslims, who form about 28 percent of the population of the region, the majority
are Jafaris. Because they accept 12 imams, Jafaris are also called “Twelvers.”
This group is especially prominent in Iran. They believe that the 12th imam will
return in the future to establish perfect justice, supplanting the rule of any
other leader. This belief has undermined government authority since the
establishment of Twelver Shiism as the state religion in 1501. Twelvers also
reside in Iraq and Lebanon. Another Shia sect, the Zaydis of Yemen, recognize
five imams. A third group, called Ismailis (“Seveners”), recognize seven imams;
a few hundred thousand Ismailis reside in Syria.
More than half of the Christians in the
Middle East live in Egypt. Most Egyptian Christians belong to the Coptic church.
The remaining Middle Eastern Christians are divided between Orthodox groups
(Armenian, Greek, and Syrian) and Catholic groups (Armenian, Greek, Maronite,
and Syrian) in Iraq, Lebanon, and Syria. The formal division between Orthodox
and Catholic sects dates back to the Great Schism of 1054 between the Eastern
and Roman churches. Apart from the Maronites, however, most Middle Eastern
Catholics are descendants of converts from various Orthodox churches in the 17th
and 18th centuries.
Almost all Middle Eastern Jews live in
Israel. Orthodox Jews, who strictly follow traditional Judaic beliefs and
practices, hold the most influence over religious affairs in Israel. Reform
Jews, who seek to modify Jewish tradition to meet contemporary circumstances,
and Conservative Jews, who maintain a middle position between the two,
constitute important minorities. Reform and Conservative groups continually
struggle for a limited role in Israeli religious affairs.
C | Education |
Most Middle Eastern countries provide
free primary and secondary education. University education is either free or
subsidized by scholarships for those in need. Although in theory primary
education is compulsory in all countries, internal conflicts and remoteness of
many areas from urban centers often prevent full attendance. Nearly all
school-aged females participate in the primary and secondary education, but far
fewer continue to university level. In more conservative states such as Saudi
Arabia, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates, the sexes are educated separately
at all levels. Although literacy has improved significantly in recent years, it
remains low in much of the Middle East by Western standards. In the mid-1990s
literacy rates for people aged 15 or older were 38 percent in Yemen, 51 percent
in Egypt, 58 percent in Iraq, 63 percent in Saudi Arabia, 71 percent in Syria,
and 72 percent in Iran.
D | Way of Life |
Due to the growth of the petroleum
industry and accompanying modernization, traditional ways of life largely
disappeared from most parts of the Middle East in the 20th century. For
instance, the pastoral nomads that symbolize the Middle East to many people
account for less than 1 percent of the region’s population. The few remaining
nomads reside in the vast deserts of Syria, Iraq, and the Arabian Peninsula, and
some Kurdish and Persian tribes still migrate back and forth from summer to
winter pastures. The majority of the population now lives in either urban
settlements of more than 10,000 people or in smaller rural villages.
With the first wave of modernization came
a general trend toward secularism. Islam exerted less influence on social
conduct, and religious practice was gradually relegated from the public to the
private sphere. One of the most visible effects was an increase in gender
equality. Women gained more opportunities for education and employment,
especially in the urban centers. Since the late 1960s the rise of Islamic
fundamentalism, which, among other things, reasserts values that emphasize the
subordination of women to men, has begun to have an adverse effect on these
developments.
IV | ECONOMY |
As in most less-developed countries,
economic development in the Middle East since the mid-19th century has been
oriented toward production of cash crops or commodities for overseas markets. In
the 19th and early 20th centuries these products were agricultural: cotton from
Egypt, silk from Lebanon, and grains of various kinds from Turkey, Iraq, and
Syria and its neighbors. Since the mid-20th century the main export commodities
have been oil from the countries where it is located, and labor from poorer
countries where it is not. Apart from the oil industry, however, the region
remains largely undeveloped. It remains a net importer of most commodities,
including food.
After political revolutions of the 1950s, a
form of state control based on the centrally planned model of the Union of
Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) was imposed on the economies of Egypt, Iraq,
Syria, and South Yemen (now part of the Republic of Yemen). The governments of
these countries set economic policy and controlled major industries. Large
landholdings were broken up and redistributed, while import controls,
government-directed foreign exchange rates, and subsidies on essential
foodstuffs were also introduced. The Soviet Union became the main supplier of
weapons to these countries. Some of this structure remains in place, but with
the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 and worldwide tendencies toward
privatization, forms of Soviet-style government assistance such as food
subsidies and easy access to healthcare, education, and welfare has been greatly
reduced. Meanwhile, beginning in the 1950s other pro-Western countries such as
Iran, Israel, Jordan, and Turkey received financial or technical aid and
military supplies from the West
A | Mining |
About 65 percent of the world's petroleum
reserves and 26 percent of its natural gas reserves are in Iran, Iraq, Kuwait,
Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates. In 1996 these states produced about
26 percent of the world’s oil and 5 percent of its natural gas. The economies of
these countries depend almost entirely on these reserves. Petroleum mining and
related industries also dominate the economies of Bahrain, Qatar, and Oman, all
of which have smaller but still significant reserves. Small populations and the
absence of resources besides oil limit the capacity of some states to diversify.
Only Iran and Iraq have large populations and significant agricultural
resources, and the economies of both states have been ravaged by a combination
of foreign wars and internal economic mismanagement.
B | Manufacturing |
The lack of raw materials and the small
size of local and regional markets have inhibited the growth of manufacturing in
the Middle East. However, some Middle Eastern countries have manufacturing
sectors that contribute significantly to their economies. Examples are Egypt and
Turkey, whose manufactures include textiles, processed foods, and chemicals. In
the oil states petrochemicals make up a significant part of the manufacturing
sector, but most Middle Eastern oil is still exported as crude.
C | Agriculture |
Although agriculture dominated the
regional economy until the 1950s, the Middle East was importing more than half
of its food requirements by the early 1990s. Agriculture remains significant in
the economies of Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Iran, Egypt, and Turkey, supplying between
15 and 25 percent of their gross domestic product. These figures do not fully
reflect subsistence agricultural activities that engage large portions of the
population, especially in poorer countries. Reliance on agricultural imports is
a result of many factors, including high population growth, rural-to-urban
migration (which reduced the number of farmers), and development strategies of
the 1960s and 1970s that focused on heavy industry rather than agriculture.
V | HISTORY |
Civilization as we know it began in the
Middle East. The cultivation of cereals, first undertaken in the Middle East
around 8000 bc, led to the
creation of the first settled communities with permanent dwellings. Large
archaeological mounds called tells contain the remains of some of these
communities. Tells have been found in present-day Turkey and throughout the
Fertile Crescent, an ancient agricultural region containing parts of present-day
Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Israel, and Jordan. Jericho in the present-day West Bank
and Çatal Hüyük in present-day Turkey are two of the best known of these
sites.
The first civilizations—groups with complex,
hierarchical political organizations—began about 3000 bc in the valleys of the Nile and of the
Tigris and Euphrates. Civilizations grew out of the need to organize the
distribution of water for irrigation and to protect the land around the rivers
from floods. These developments improved agricultural yields and made economic
diversification possible. Complex urban societies with codified legal systems,
often centered on religious-based monarchies, evolved. Their rulers gained
control of long-distance trade, which was especially important given the
scarcity in the river valleys of mineral resources and of timber for building.
Writing systems using hieroglyphs, pictorial characters representing
recognizable objects, began as a means of facilitating administration. Alphabets
with symbols representing sounds rather than objects evolved about 1500 bc.
A | Mesopotamia and Egypt |
The earliest civilizations in an area
between the Tigris and Euphrates known as Mesopotamia (Greek for “between the
rivers”; the area is now Iraq) were the Sumerians to the south and the Akkadians
to the north. From about 2330 bc
the Akkadians expanded southward, extending their control from Syria to the head
of the Persian Gulf and east into Persia (now Iran). Two other dynasties, the
Amorites and the Elamites, succeeded the Akkadians, and the area split into a
number of smaller states including Assyria and Babylon. Hammurabi, the king of
Babylonia during the first half of the 18th century bc, developed one of the earliest
systematic collections of laws (see Code of Hammurabi). The Hittites,
whose empire extended through much of present-day Turkey and into northern
Mesopotamia by the 14th century bc, traded with their contemporaries in
Greece. As a result of this trade, many Mesopotamian ideas reached Greece.
Egyptian civilization also began about 3000
bc when a single ruler united
southern and northern Egypt. Egypt exhibited a greater degree of political
continuity than Mesopotamia. There were no major foreign invasions or externally
imposed changes of regime until the beginning of the 1st millennium bc. While Mesopotamian kings were often
also priests, Egyptians believed their kings were gods who could control the
waters of the Nile. The pyramids, richly treasured tombs in which kings were
buried, serve as lasting symbols of this divine monarchy. The Great Pyramid at
Giza, built during the middle of the 3rd millennium bc, remains among the most notable
structures in the history of architecture. Over the centuries Egypt extended
control south to mine the extensive gold deposits of Nubia (a region of southern
Egypt and northern Sudan), and northeast toward present-day Syria.
B | The Birth of Judaism |
Late in the 2nd millennium bc the Aramaeans moved into present-day
Syria, establishing the ancient country of Aram. They spoke a Semitic language
(see Aramaic language) from which Hebrew and Arabic are derived. Other
Semitic peoples, a confederation of Hebrew tribes called the Israelites, settled
in the region of Palestine during the same time period (see Hebrews
(people)). Israelite religion and institutions were shaped under Hebrew prophet
and lawgiver Moses about 1300 bc
and subsequently under Saul and David, the first two kings of ancient Israel, in
the 11th and 10th centuries bc.
The Israelites believed that they, the Jews, were the chosen people of their one
God. They were the first ethnic and religious group to adopt monotheism. The
region was attacked by Assyria in 722 bc and by Assyria’s successor,
Babylonia, in 586 bc. On both
occasions many thousands of Jews were forced into exile.
C | Persian, Greek, and Roman Empires |
In the 9th century bc the empire of the Assyrians expanded
beyond Mesopotamia to include the entire Fertile Crescent region. It endured
until 612 bc when the Babylonians
and the Medes, a polytheistic tribal culture from the northeastern part of
present-day Iran, conquered the Assyrian capital of Nineveh. In 550 bc Persian ruler Cyrus the Great
overthrew the Medes and founded the Achaemenid dynasty. At the height of its
rule under Darius I, the Persian Empire extended from northern Greece and
present-day Libya in the west as far east as the Indus Valley in present-day
Pakistan. During this period another monotheistic religion, Zoroastrianism,
developed in Persia. Its tolerance of Judaism and of the various polytheistic
religions of the region helped maintain the empire's unity for the next two
centuries. Now almost extinct, Zoroastrianism flourished for many centuries
throughout Persia.
The conquests of Macedonian king Alexander
the Great between 334 and 323 bc
briefly united an area covering present-day Greece, Turkey, Greater Syria
(present-day Syria, Lebanon, Israel, and Jordan prior to partitioning after
World War I), Egypt, Iraq, Iran, and Afghanistan. After his death the region
remained a vast commercial and cultural area, often referred to as the
Hellenistic world (from the Greek word Hellas, which means “Greece”).
This Hellenistic Age, in which Greek became an international language, many new
cities were founded, and Greek religion and arts blended with native ways,
lasted until the Romans rose to power in the Mediterranean region at the
beginning of the 2nd century bc.
Roman general Pompey the Great had conquered the territory from the
Mediterranean Sea to western Persia by 62 bc, and Egypt fell to Rome in 30 bc. The Parthians, an independent
kingdom in present-day Iran and Afghanistan, blocked Roman attempts to advance
further east. Jewish revolts against the Romans during the 1st and 2nd centuries
ad led to exile and major
migrations of Jews from Palestine, Egypt, and Mesopotamia to other parts of the
Roman world (see Jews: The Great Revolt).
D | Early Christianity |
Christianity began in Jerusalem as a Jewish
sect that proclaimed Jesus Christ as the Messiah, or savior of the Jews. As the
movement grew after the death of Jesus about ad 30, it separated from the Jewish
faith. An early Christian missionary and theologian named Paul began to preach
the new religion to the wider, non-Jewish world in the eastern Mediterranean,
southwestern Turkey, Greece, and Italy. Conversion was gradual and piecemeal,
but by the 2nd century ad
Christianity had spread beyond the Middle East to parts of Europe and North
Africa. The Romans, whose religion demanded emperor worship, perceived the new
religion as a threat to their control. Romans persecuted Christians until the
early 4th century when Roman emperor Constantine the Great converted to
Christianity and established it as the official religion of the Roman Empire. By
600 most of Anatolia, Mesopotamia, Egypt, and the Fertile Crescent, as well as
southern and western Europe and North Africa, was Christian.
However, differences over interpretation of
the faith developed within the early church, prompting councils in the 4th and
5th centuries to define Christian doctrine. Communities that would not accept
the councils' definitions formed separate churches. Some of these, such as the
Coptic church in Egypt and the Nestorian church in Iraq, Iran, and Syria, still
exist today. The split of the Roman Empire into Eastern and Western segments in
the 4th century and the fall of the Western section in the 5th century
undermined the unity of Christianity. A split developed along regional lines
between the church of Rome in the West and that of Byzantium (now İstanbul,
Turkey) in the East. The two sides became the Catholic and Orthodox churches,
respectively, because Eastern Christians would not accept Rome as the center of
church authority. The split became permanent in the 11th century, when the
Catholic church began to assert its claim to authority more vigorously.
E | The Rise of Islam |
Islam, the last of the three great
monotheist religions, began with the teachings of the Prophet Muhammad at the
beginning of the 7th century in Mecca and Yathrib (now Medina), both in
present-day Saudi Arabia. Over the next century, Arab armies brought the faith
as far west as Spain, as far north as the Black Sea, and as far east as the
Indus Valley in present-day Pakistan. In the process they defeated the Sassanids
of Persia (see Persia: The Sassanids) and forced the Byzantines
out of eastern Anatolia, the Fertile Crescent, Egypt, and North Africa. In
general, this expansion met with little resistance.
After the rule of the first four caliphs,
or successors to the prophet, the political center of Islam moved away from the
Arabian Peninsula, first to Damascus, Syria, from 661 to 750 under the Umayyad
caliphate and then to the new city of Baghdād in Mesopotamia during the early
years of the Abbasid caliphate (750-1258). The political unity of the Muslim
world gradually disintegrated in the 9th and 10th centuries, but the region
retained a considerable degree of cultural unity through a common legal and
commercial system and a common language of literature, high culture, and
religion. During this period local dynasties in Iran inspired a national
cultural revival, keeping alive Persian traditions, including literature and
court ceremonies, which influenced the Arab caliphates. Meanwhile the Fatimids,
an Ismaili Shia caliphate with origins in North Africa, conquered Egypt and
established the city of Cairo, from where they ruled all of North Africa,
Palestine, and Syria until the late 12th century (see Caliphate: The
Fatimid Dynasty and the Umayyads of Spain). The Seljuks, a Turkish dynasty
from Central Asia that converted to Sunni Islam in the 10th century, expanded
their control to Anatolia, Iran, Iraq, Palestine, and Syria in the 11th century.
They expanded the supremacy of Sunni Islam by founding theological colleges in
most of the major cities. Graduates of these colleges staffed the political,
religious, educational, and judicial institutions of the state.
F | The Crusades |
In the 11th century, European Christians
began to challenge Muslim predominance in the Mediterranean, retaking Sicily and
much of Spain by the mid-12th century. At the same time, the papacy inaugurated
the Crusades, a series of largely unsuccessful efforts to recapture the Holy
Land from the Muslims. Initially the Crusaders established a number of small
states on or near the Mediterranean coast: Antioch, Edessa, Jerusalem, and
Tripoli. Edessa returned to Muslim control in 1144, and the others had fallen to
Kurdish Muslim leader Saladin by the time of the Third Crusade in 1189. Although
the influence of the Crusades in the Arab world was slight, many of the European
merchant communities established in the Crusader states remained intact after
Muslims recaptured the region. These communities continually promoted trade
between Europe and the Middle East.
G | The Mongols and the Mamluks |
The last nomadic group to migrate west from
inner Asia, the Mongols, arrived in the 13th century (see Mongol Empire).
By 1231 they had overrun Iran and Mesopotamia, and in 1258 they destroyed
Baghdād, ending the caliphate of the Abbasids. Originally pagans, the Mongols
soon embraced Sunni Islam and became its zealous defenders. The Mamluks, slaves
who had advanced to high military and political posts in Egypt, halted the
Mongol invasion of Egypt and Syria in 1260. Mamluk general Baybars I became
sultan of Egypt, uniting Egypt and Syria into a single state for the next 250
years.
H | The Ottoman Empire |
Late in the 13th century, a Muslim warrior
known as Osman began to lead successful raids against the Byzantine strongholds
in western Anatolia. His followers, the Ottomans, extended control in all
directions, forging an empire that would be the principal political force in the
western Islamic world for 600 years. At its height in the second half of the
16th century, the Ottoman Empire included southeastern Europe, Anatolia, Iraq,
western Iran, Greater Syria, Egypt, the western Arabian Peninsula, and the coast
of North Africa between Egypt and eastern Morocco. Further east the Ottomans'
contemporaries and rivals the Safavids established a dynasty in Iran and
Afghanistan between 1501 and 1722, imposing Twelver Shia Islam as the official
religion and founding the modern Iranian state. Both the Ottomans and the
Safavids ruled some of the most advanced and militarily and economically secure
states of their time. In the early 18th century the Ottoman Empire began a long
process of decline and decay, brought about by a combination of internal strife
and external pressures from the rise of the European powers to economic,
scientific, and political domination.
I | European Interest |
In the mid-18th century, as France and
Britain fought for control of India, both took a strategic interest in the
Ottoman Empire and Iran, which lay across the route between Europe and India.
Britain had gained supremacy in India by 1763, but in 1798 French emperor
Napoleon I attempted to establish a stronghold in Egypt from which to attack the
British in India. The Battle of the Nile resulted in the defeat of France and
Britain's continued supremacy in India, as well as renewed European interest in
the Middle East. As industrialization progressed, first in Britain and then in
other European nations, demand grew for both raw materials and markets for
manufactured products. The Middle East became a source of grains and wool, as
well as cotton in Egypt and Syria, silk in Lebanon, and tobacco in Anatolia and
Iran. Overall, the value of European trade with the region increased tenfold
during the 19th century.
At various times in the 19th century, the
governments of Egypt, Iran, and the Ottoman Empire began to borrow on European
money markets, almost always on disadvantageous terms. Partly as a result, Egypt
and the Ottoman Empire went bankrupt in the 1870s. Bankruptcy was followed by
the installation in local treasuries of European financial controllers who
introduced austerity programs and tax increases to pay off the debt. These
measures aroused strong local opposition, which in Egypt was followed by a
British invasion in 1882. Although supposedly made to protect the ruler from his
rebellious subjects, the invasion actually inaugurated a long period of foreign
rule.
By the first decade of the 20th century, a
variety of nationalist movements had come into being in the Ottoman Empire. Arab
nationalism became popular among intellectuals in Greater Syria, while Armenian
nationalism also grew after the massacres of Armenians in Anatolia in the 1890s.
Zionism (the movement to reunite the Jewish people in Palestine) had begun to
gain momentum in Europe, and the first waves of Jewish settlement in Palestine
began in 1882. A Turanian movement stressing the unity and solidarity of the
Turkish people from present-day Turkey eastwards through Central Asia was
growing as well.
J | World War I and Aftermath |
In 1914 the Ottoman Empire entered World
War I (1914-1918) on the side of the Central Powers (Germany, Austria-Hungary,
and Bulgaria) against the Allied Powers (28 nations including Britain, France,
Russia, Italy, and the United States). In order to protect the oil installations
of southwestern Iran and to preempt an Ottoman thrust toward the Persian Gulf,
British Indian troops invaded southern Iraq in the first weeks of the war,
eventually reaching Baghdād in March 1917. Syria and Palestine remained under
Ottoman control until the last months of the war. Upon defeat by the Allies, the
Ottoman Empire lost its Arab provinces and was confined to present-day Turkey.
Conflicting arrangements that the Allies
had made among themselves and with others during the war complicated control of
the Middle East after the war. In 1916 the Allies negotiated the Sykes-Picot
agreement, which stated that rulership of the Arab part of the Ottoman Empire
would be divided among Britain, France, Italy, and Russia after the war.
Meanwhile, in 1915 and 1916 the British government promised Husein ibn Ali, the
sharif of Mecca, the right to Arab independence in return for collaboration with
the Allies against the Ottomans. However, the British left vague the precise
areas where Arab independence would be recognized. Finally, the British promised
their support for “the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the
Jewish people” in the Balfour Declaration of November 1917 to win worldwide
Jewish support for the war effort. The vagueness and potentially conflicting
commitments of these agreements strained relationships among all the parties
involved, particularly with regard to Palestine.
During various postwar peace conferences
the idea of direct colonial rule over the former Arab provinces was discarded in
favor of a mandate system. Under this system, members of the newly formed League
of Nations were granted supervision of territories with varying degrees of
independence. Five new mandate states were created: Britain took over Iraq,
Palestine, and Transjordan (now Jordan), while France took Syria and Lebanon.
When the Allies attempted to parcel out parts of present-day Turkey, Turkish
soldier Mustafa Kemal (later Atatürk) rallied national support and expelled
French, Greek, and Italian forces from the country by 1922. Kemal signed the
final postwar territorial settlement in 1923, and the Turkish republic, with
Kemal as president, was proclaimed later that year. Turkey abolished the
caliphate (an office assumed by Ottoman sultans) in 1924.
K | Uprisings and Independence Movements |
The new political order was widely
contested after the war. The Arab states had been subject to Ottoman rule for
centuries before European arrival. In many cases, what was anti-Ottoman
sentiment soon became anti-European sentiment. In 1920, uprisings in Iraq
against British rule compelled the British government to modify the mandate
system by creating a provisional government. Iraq became formally independent in
1932. In Syria the French had considerable difficulty controlling a major
national uprising from 1925 to 1927. Despite negotiations in 1938 for increased
Syrian autonomy, independence was not achieved until 1946. Transjordan obtained
qualified independence in 1928 and full independence in 1946. Lebanon became
fully independent of France in 1943. Egypt, which had become a British
protectorate in 1914, became an independent state in 1922. However, a large
British military presence remained until 1954.
L | The Birth of Israel and Ensuing Conflicts |
During the early years of British-mandated
Palestine, Jewish settlement increased. Jews formed 11 percent of the population
of Palestine in 1922 and 29 percent in 1936. Arabs opposed British support of
Zionism, and they started a revolt that lasted from 1936 to 1939. In an effort
to appease the Arab world, Britain issued the White Paper of 1939, restricting
Jewish immigration and land sales to Jews and providing for the establishment of
an independent Palestinian state within ten years. Britain's weakening
commitment to Zionism, combined with the Holocaust during World War II
(1939-1945)-in which German Nazis systematically murdered millions of European
Jews-caused Jews in Palestine and worldwide to step up their demands for a
Jewish state. In 1947 Britain decided to leave Palestine, and called on the
United Nations (UN), the successor to the League of Nations, to make
recommendations for the area’s future.
In November 1947 the United Nations
resolved to partition Palestine into Arab and Jewish areas, and Britain
announced that it would leave the region by May 15, 1948. The Jews accepted the
proposal, but the Arabs rejected it as a violation of their right to
self-determination. Violence erupted and soon turned into full-scale civil war.
In early 1948 Jewish guerrilla forces began terrorist attacks on Arab
communities, forcing much of the Arab population to flee. When Israel was
declared an independent Jewish state upon British withdrawal, forces from
neighboring Arab countries joined the war against Israel. By the end of the
fighting in 1949, Israel had substantially increased the size of its territory
beyond the area granted to it by the UN partition, and about 900,000
Palestinians became refugees outside the state of Israel.
Arabs and Israelis failed to reach a
comprehensive peace agreement, and additional wars followed. In 1956 Britain and
France joined Israel against Egypt in a conflict over control of the Suez Canal
(see Suez Crisis). Diplomatic intervention by the United States and the
Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) helped end the conflict. Israel
further expanded its territory by taking the West Bank, Gaza Strip, Golan
Heights, and the Sinai Peninsula (known collectively as the Occupied
Territories) in the Six-Day War of 1967. In this conflict and in another in
1973, the two superpowers stepped up their involvement by supplying weapons, the
United States to Israel and the USSR to the Arab nations (see
Arab-Israeli War of 1973).
In October 1974 the Arab League recognized
the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), a group founded in 1964 to work
toward Palestinian nationhood, as the legitimate representative of the
Palestinian people. In addition, the United Nations granted the PLO observer
status, meaning it could participate in UN deliberations but could not vote on
resolutions. The 1978 Camp David Accords, under which Israel returned the Sinai
Peninsula to Egypt, and the resulting peace treaty between Egypt and Israel of
March 1979 removed Egypt from the Arab-Israeli conflict. However, Israel did not
reach peace agreements with the other Arab nations, and the future of other
occupied regions remained undetermined. In 1987 a movement known as the
intifada, a series of demonstrations, strikes, and riots against
Israeli rule, began in the Gaza Strip and spread throughout the Occupied
Territories.
M | Islamic Revival and the Iranian Revolution |
In the first half of the 20th century the
spread of literacy, wider access to education, and the growth of modern
communications networks substantially changed Middle Eastern society. With the
formation of new classes and political institutions came increased pressure to
end foreign rule and to widen political participation. Most early political
movements were avowedly secular in their structure and objectives. The 1950s in
particular seemed to be a time of great hope and optimism for the peoples of the
Middle East. The rise of Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser and his early
triumphs with the Suez Crisis and at the Bandung Conference, where 29 nations of
Asia and Africa demanded an independent voice in international affairs, were a
source of inspiration. He rejected Western influence, embraced a policy of
nonalignment with either the U.S.- or Soviet-led blocs of power, and espoused
the possibility of a strong, united Arab world. The potential of socialism, or
state-sponsored economic development, together with the friendship of the Soviet
Union and increasing oil revenues, gave new confidence. The reality, embodied in
the Arab defeat in the Six-Day War, was far less inspiring.
In the 1970s Muslims in many countries
began to seek, often violently, the revival of Islamic law in both governmental
and wider societal spheres. There are various explanations for this “Islamic
revival.” It most likely resulted from the combination of many factors, such as
the perceived failure of mass political movements in the second half of the 20th
century, the deeply undemocratic and unrepresentative regimes in power in almost
all Middle Eastern states, and the lack of progress on major regional issues
such as the Arab-Israeli conflict. Other factors were the pro-Western attitudes
of rulers like the shah of Iran and Egyptian president Anwar al-Sadat, the
increasing gap both within and among states between rich and poor, and
widespread misery and despair caused by war, inflation, unemployment, and
poverty that had affected the region for so long. However, Islamic
fundamentalist activists have rarely offered viable alternatives to the
conditions they criticized.
The most successful attempt to establish an
Islamic state was the Islamic Revolution of Iran in 1978 and 1979. During the
1960s and 1970s Iran’s ruler, Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi, attempted to modernize
Iran at great speed. Although living standards rose, inflation soared and rapid
migration to cities as the economy industrialized severely disrupted Iran’s
traditional social structure. Many foreigners working in Iran brought Western
habits and an increased demand for consumer goods, which further stressed Iran’s
cultural values. Also, the shah's role as a principal ally of the United States
in the Middle East made him highly unpopular. Religious leader Ayatollah
Ruhollah Khomeini, in exile since 1963 for criticizing the shah, broadcast
messages from Iraq and later from Paris to his followers. Matters came to a head
in 1978, when hundreds of demonstrators were killed in clashes with the police.
In January 1979 the ayatollah’s followers forced the shah to flee Iran, and
Khomeini returned the next month. He and his supporters set up an Islamic
republic by a referendum in April 1979.
N | Iran-Iraq War |
In neighboring Iraq, dictator Saddam
Hussein feared that the Iranian Revolution would prompt Iraqi Shias to rebel.
Using a border dispute as a pretext, Hussein invaded southwestern Iran in
September 1980. The war proved to be one of the most costly, unnecessary, and
fruitless conflicts of the 20th century. Finally, in 1988, the two countries
accepted a UN resolution calling for a cease-fire.
O | Persian Gulf War |
The Iraqi economy was severely weakened by
the war with Iran, and the regime of Saddam Hussein became deeply unpopular. To
divert attention from his domestic problems, and to punish neighboring Kuwait
for its part in depressing the price of oil, Hussein directed his forces to
invade and annex Kuwait in August 1990. In response, an international coalition
led by the United States launched an air attack against Iraq in January 1991.
After a brief ground war the coalition defeated Iraqi forces by the end of
February. See Persian Gulf War.
The conflict highlighted significant
changes in world politics and international relations since the late 1980s. The
decline of the USSR, which had been involved in Middle Eastern affairs since the
1950s, combined with a lack of support from other Arab countries that had
traditionally banded together, left Saddam Hussein with virtually no allies. The
Iraqi people, exhausted after eight years of fighting Iran, did not support the
invasion of Kuwait. Many Arab nations, including Saudi Arabia, Syria, Egypt, and
the smaller Persian Gulf states, lent military support to the coalition that
defeated Iraq. Fearing regional instability, the coalition did not attempt to
remove Hussein from power. The lack of international support for Kurdish and
Shia rebel groups in Iraq after the war further showed the hesitancy of other
nations to become involved in Iraqi internal affairs.
P | The Middle East in the Late 20th and Early 21st Centuries |
At the end of the late 20th century and the
beginning of the 21st century many ongoing issues continued to affect relations
between the Middle East and the rest of the world. In Iraq, economic sanctions,
imposed after its invasion of Kuwait in 1990, remained in effect. These
sanctions, which included an embargo on Iraqi oil, were intended to force Iraq
to pay war reparations and destroy its nuclear, chemical, and biological
weapons. In December 1998 Hussein’s decision to expel international weapons
inspectors who were sent to Iraq to ensure that these conditions were met drew
renewed criticism and threats of military action from several Western nations.
UN member nations, many of whom rely heavily on Middle Eastern oil, often failed
to agree on the extent and duration of the sanctions and on an appropriate
response to Hussein’s noncompliance. Following a UN resolution in October 2002,
Hussein agreed to readmit weapons inspectors. The government of U.S. president
George W. Bush, however, insisted that Hussein possessed chemical and biological
weapons and was actively planning to reconstitute a nuclear weapons program. In
March 2003 U.S.-led forces invaded Iraq and overthrew the Hussein regime.
Following the war, however, no evidence was found that Iraq possessed weapons of
mass destruction or the production facilities needed to manufacture them. See
also U.S.-Iraq War.
Despite some steps toward peace, the
continuing conflict between Israelis and Arabs continued to play a significant
role in regional and worldwide relations. Negotiations beginning in 1993 between
Israel and the PLO resulted in limited Palestinian self-rule under the
Palestinian National Authority (PNA) in some parts of the West Bank and the Gaza
Strip. This initial progress in negotiations improved relations between Israel
and many Arab countries, including Jordan, which signed a peace agreement with
Israel in 1994. However, terrorist attacks continued on both sides. An Israeli
student opposed to the peace process assassinated Israel’s prime minister,
Yitzhak Rabin, in 1995. The peace process stalled once again, especially after
the election of a right-wing government under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu
in 1996, which called for the adoption of a much more uncompromising stance
toward the Palestinians.
Ehud Barak took office in July 1999 and
created a broad center-left coalition government in Israel. Barak pledged to
take “bold steps” to help forge a comprehensive peace in the Middle East. He
focused his attention on negotiations with the Palestinians and promised to
withdraw Israeli troops from southern Lebanon, which Israel had occupied since
1982, within one year. The withdrawal was completed by June 2000.
In an effort to move the
Israeli-Palestinian peace process forward, the United States convened a summit
at Camp David, Maryland, in the summer of 2000, at which U.S. president Bill
Clinton, Barak, and PNA president Yasir Arafat focused on a comprehensive peace
agreement. Despite intense efforts and some areas of accord, no agreement was
reached, and violent clashes between Palestinians and Israelis ensued. Barak
suddenly resigned as prime minister in December 2000.
Barak was succeeded by Ariel Sharon, who
announced in 2003 that Israel would unilaterally withdraw from the Gaza Strip in
2005. Sharon argued that the peace process could not go forward until the PNA
demonstrated that it could control terrorism by groups such as Hamas and Islamic
Jihad. Israel completed the evacuation of Gaza in August 2005. However, the PNA,
now headed by Mahmoud Abbas, who succeeded Arafat following Arafat’s death in
2004, continued to seek a more wide-ranging negotiated settlement which would
include Israeli withdrawal from all or most of the West Bank and perhaps from
East Jerusalem.
Politically motivated Islamic groups
continued to operate in many Middle Eastern countries in the early 21st century.
In general, these groups express anger and frustration against what they regard
as corrupt and illegitimate regimes, against U.S. activities in Afghanistan and
Iraq, and against continuing U.S. support for Israel. However, violence has not
been confined to the struggle against tyranny and injustice, but has also been
directed against individual advocates of tolerance and democracy. Most Middle
Eastern governments have responded with varying degrees of repression, both
against Islamists and those urging respect for human rights.
It is also widely believed in the Middle
East that the West, and especially the United States, largely controls the
affairs of the region, and that the corrupt governments of the Middle East
survive because the West needs them in order to protect its interests there.
These beliefs have caused considerable anti-Western sentiment and widespread
feelings of cynicism and disempowerment, which in turn have led many to conclude
that Islam is the only solution.
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