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3 SOUTHWEST ASIA (THE MIDDLE EAST)
Turkey, Syria, Lebanon, Israel, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Oman, United Arab Emirates,
Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait, Iraq, and Iran.
The term Middle East harks back to the British Empire, when Turkey was the Near East and
China and Japan were the Far East. What we call Southwest Asia today was in the middle.
Islam is the dominant cultural feature, with the exception of Jewish Israel and Multi-religions
Lebanon. Aridity is the dominant physical characteristic.
PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY:
 Generally under 20" of rainfall annually, some under 5". Precipitation is primarily
orographic, found where the mountains are, especially in Yemen, which has a large
population with few other natural resources.
 Great deforestation in the North, especially around the Mediterranean Sea. The Cedars of
Lebanon were exported to Egypt in ancient times, now there are only a few left.
 Ground water discovery for irrigation was a result of petroleum exploration, especially in
Libya, Egypt, the coast of the Arabian Peninsula, and northeastern Iran.
 Many sea water desalinization plants.
 Agriculture--Not much, most in the winter or irrigated.
 Most food is imported.
HISTORY
 During the Pleistocene, this area was moist and had savanna and forest cover because the
Eurasian ice sheet blocked the flow of moist air over Europe and redirected it over North
Africa and the Southwest Asia, thus the Sahara and the Arabian deserts have appeared in the
last 2 million years.
 There were people all over in the moist period, but with increasing aridity, people were
confined to the Nile valley and Mesopotamia and the Shatt-al-Arab area (in Iraq) between
the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers, the Cradle of Civilization, aka Fertile Crescent.
 Some of the most crucial events in the history of mankind took place in the area. Agriculture
began in Mesopotamia and later, in this "land between the rivers" the first cities grew up,
with the attendant development of laws, crafts, trade and writing. From the broader area we
call the Middle East came the basic elements of mathematics, the wheel, the architectural
arch, the sciences of astronomy and medicine, and the framework of organized trade and
commerce.
 From this region too, came the three great monotheistic religions: Judaism, Christianity and
Islam.
 In short, civilization began in the land that lies between the valleys of the Nile and the Indus.
Over the past six thousand years great cultures have sprung from this source and ebbed and
flowed across the map of the Middle East. Some of them rivaled and surpassed the levels of
culture later reached by the Greeks and Romans of classical times, who acknowledged their
debt to the civilizations of Mesopotamia and the Nile.
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Click for an interactive map.
To over-simplify: When Greek and Roman culture sank into the Dark Ages, remnants of
them continued to linger in the Byzantine lands of Turkey, Syria and Egypt, where much of
their scientific and practical knowledge and philosophy was preserved in the new language of
Arabic, by the Muslims. The great flowering of Arab culture between the ninth and
thirteenth centuries owed much to this heritage. When the golden age of Islam ended, this
vastly enriched heritage was passed back to the western Renaissance, where it once again
would play an important role in the political, economic, and cultural history of the region.
RELIGION
Watch this first: History of Religion animation
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Islam: Muhammad was born in Mecca (in the Hejiz) in what is now Saudi Arabia in 570
AD, he received his revelations about the one true God, Allah, in 590, and Islam was born
and widely accepted by 610 AD.
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Muslims believe that Muhammad was the last of a succession of prophets, among whom
were Abraham, Moses, David, and Jesus.
Their doctrine holds that the Q'uran (or Koran) (the revelations of the Angel Gabriel to
Muhammad) is the foundation of the faith.
The Muslim faith is a personal one that covers all facets of life -- public, private, social,
economic, political, as well as religious.
The five pillars of Islam are:
 the profession of the faith, the one true God is Allah and Muhammad was his last
prophet
 prayer 5 times a day
 giving alms to the poor
 fasting at Ramadan
 and a pilgrimage to Mecca (the hajj).
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The Sunni/Shi’a split: a complex history
Ali is the central figure at the origin of the Shia / Sunni split which occurred in the decades immediately
following the death of the Prophet in 632. Sunnis regard Ali as the fourth and last of the "rightly guided
caliphs" (successors to Mohammed (pbuh) as leader of the Muslims) following on from Abu Bakr 632634, Umar 634-644 and Uthman 644-656. Shias feel that Ali should have been the first caliph and that the
caliphate should pass down only to direct descendants of Muhammed (pbuh) via Ali and Fatima. They
often refer to themselves as ahl al bayt or "people of the house" [of the prophet].
When Uthman was murdered while at prayer, Ali finally succeeded to the caliphate. Ali was, however,
opposed by Aisha, wife of the Prophet (pbuh) and daughter of Abu Bakr, who accused him of being lax in
bringing Uthman's killers to justice. After Ali's army defeated Aisha's forces at the Battle of the Camel in
656, she apologized to Ali and was allowed to return to her home in Madinah where she withdrew from
public life.
However, Ali was not able to overcome the forces of Mu'awiya Umayyad, Uthman's cousin and governor
of Damascus, who also refused to recognize him until Uthman's killers had been apprehended. At the
Battle of Suffin Mu'awiya's soldiers stuck verses of the Quran onto the ends of their spears with the result
that Ali's pious supporters refused to fight them. Ali was forced to seek a compromise with Mu'awiya, but
this so shocked some of his die-hard supporters who regarded it as a betrayal that he was struck down by
one of his own men in 661.
Mu'awiya declared himself caliph. Ali's elder son Hassan accepted a pension in return for not pursuing his
claim to the caliphate. He died within a year, allegedly poisoned. Ali's younger son Hussein agreed to put
his claim to the caliphate on hold until Mu'awiya's death. However, when Mu'awiya finally died in 680,
his son Yazid usurped the caliphate. Hussein led an army against Yazid but, hopelessly outnumbered, he
and his men were slaughtered at the Battle of Karbala (in modern day Iraq). Hussein's infant son, Ali,
survived so the line continued. Yazid formed the hereditary Umayyad dynasty. The division between the
Shia and what came to be known as the Sunni was set.
An opportunity for Muslim unity arose in the 750's CE. In 750 except for a few who managed to flee to
Spain, almost the entire Umayyad aristocracy was wiped out following the Battle of Zab in Egypt in a
revolt led by Abu Al Abbass al-Saffah and aided by considerable Shia support. It was envisaged that the
Shia spiritual leader Jafar As-Siddiq, great-grandson of Hussein be installed as Caliph. But when Abbass
died in 754, this arrangement had not yet been finalized and Abbas' son Al Mansur murdered Jafar, seized
the caliphate for himself and founded the Baghdad-based Abbassid dynasty which prevailed until the sack
of Baghdad by the Mongols in 1258.
Whew, if you got through all this, good for you. I told you it was complicated, and this was the short,
Wiki version!
The Spread of Islam:
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The Ottoman Empire of the 14th and 15th centuries was a Muslim Kingdom which took
Islam across northern Africa to the Berber Moors and into the Iberian peninsula, and
eastward into Pakistan and India, which is today is still about 10% Muslim. It extends to
Indonesia, the most populous Islamic country.
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Most Southwest Asian Muslims are Sunni Muslim
Iran and part of Iraq, and western Afghanistan are populated by Shi’ite Muslims
 Shi’a is stricter. The split occurred over who would succeed Muhammad, an elected
member of the Islamic hierarchy or a blood relative of Muhammad (sort of: see
details above).
Turkey has been a nominally secular country, but large numbers of Muslims live there now
and its President Erdogan is a conservative Sunni.