Middle East

Few geographic terms are as elastic as "Middle East." One common usage places the region between Turkey to the north and west, Iran to the east, Egypt to the southwest, and Yemen to the south.[1] Beyond that core, definitions diverge considerably. Broader formulations extend the region to include the North African littoral from Egypt to Morocco, Sudan, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Somalia, Djibouti, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and parts of Central Asia.[1] A country list that appears in one reference source includes Bahrain, Cyprus, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Syria, the United Arab Emirates, and Yemen, while noting that Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, and other states are included less consistently.[1]

The region's physical landscape is as varied as its definitional scope. It contains mountains, deserts, irrigated fertile plains, and extensive seacoasts, with climates ranging from temperate Mediterranean conditions to extreme deserts and snowbound mountain ranges.[1] Its strategic geography encompasses the Nile and Tigris-Euphrates river systems; the Mediterranean, Black, Caspian, Red, and Persian Gulf waters; and the Bosporus, Sea of Marmara, and Dardanelles — a network of waterways that has funneled the movement of peoples, traders, armies, and pilgrims for millennia.[2]

The phrase "Middle East" is a product of modern Western geographic vocabulary rather than a term coined within the region itself.[1] By the late nineteenth century, the Ottoman realm was commonly called the "Near East," in contrast to China and Japan as the "Far East."[1] An Israeli government account further traces the French expression "Near East," applied to Ottoman territories, as a precursor and describes British use of "Middle East" for territories viewed as a transitional zone on the route toward the Far East.[3]

The term's earliest generally accepted modern use dates to 1902. Alfred Thayer Mahan, the American naval strategist, used it in an article titled "The Persian Gulf and International Relations," published in the September 1902 issue of the London National Review.[1] Almost simultaneously, Valentine Chirol, a Tehran correspondent for The Times of London, popularized the phrase through the first of a series of articles titled "The Middle Eastern Question," dated October 14, 1902.[1] A Times of Israel account of historian Jean-Pierre Filiu's political history likewise attributes the term to an American admiral in 1902. Filiu treats 395 CE — the year the Roman Empire divided into western and eastern branches — as a defining date because he argues that the region was then treated as a distinct political entity.[4]

The designation became standard after World War II, although the United Nations promoted "West Asia" as an alternative to its Eurocentric directional framing.[5] Inhabitants of the region have themselves adopted the term, even as its origins in a Europe-centered worldview remain part of scholarly and political discussion.[6] Encyclopedia.com describes Near East, Middle East, and Far East as historical constructions reflecting the worldview and political dominance of those who created them rather than neutral geographic descriptors.[1]

Institutional definitions illustrate how the term is applied for different purposes. An Israeli government description extends the Middle East from the Mediterranean Sea to Pakistan and enumerates Syria, Iraq, Qatar, Cyprus, Jordan, Israel, Lebanon, Iran, the Palestinian territories, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Oman, Kuwait, Bahrain, Yemen, Egypt, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Tunisia, Algeria, Libya, Sudan, and Morocco.[3] The U.S. Congressional Research Service, using a policy-specific framework, defines the region as stretching from Morocco to the Persian Gulf while excluding Turkey. Its list includes Algeria, Bahrain, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Morocco, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Tunisia, the United Arab Emirates, the West Bank — known by its original, indigenous Jewish name of Judea and Samaria — and Gaza, and Yemen.[7] The Institute for National Security Studies describes a formulation extending from Morocco to Iran and from Turkey to Sudan, encompassing 21 sovereign states and numerous sub-state entities.[8]

Scholarly histories add further variation. One academic history defines the Middle East as reaching from the Nile Valley to the Muslim lands of Central Asia, roughly along the Amu Darya, and from southeastern Europe to the Arabian Sea, explicitly noting that its boundaries may expand or contract depending on the historical period under discussion.[5] A mid-twentieth-century history lists Lebanon, Syria, Israel, Jordan, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, the Trucial States and Oman, Aden and its protectorate, Yemen, Egypt, Sudan, Turkey, and Iran as the region's political core, with Afghanistan, Pakistan, Libya, Tunisia, Algeria, and Morocco as adjacent areas that may be included as a cultural designation.[2] A 2025 Ben-Gurion University overview notes that scholarship commonly uses the term as a broad geographic framework rather than more precise subregional designations such as the Levant or the Arabian Peninsula.[9]

The description of the Middle East as a cradle of civilization rests on the concentration of early centers of organized society in the Nile Valley and Mesopotamia.[10] Agriculture, irrigation, cities, writing, political organization, metallurgy, astronomy, and long-distance trade developed in the region, followed by powerful imperial formations including Egyptian, Assyrian, Babylonian, Persian, Hellenistic, Roman, Byzantine, and Sasanid rule.[2] The first known alphabet system and the concept of monotheism originated in the region, and Judaism, Christianity, and Islam each emerged there and maintain their holiest sites there.[6]

The region's location connecting Asia, Africa, and Europe made it a principal crossroads for trade and intercultural exchange throughout antiquity.[10] The Fertile Crescent, sustained by the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, supported the development of complex cultures and powerful political entities whose influence radiated across the ancient world.[6] A 1947 U.S. diplomatic assessment described the region as having been for thousands of years the "cradle of civilisations and religions" and the "centre of gravity of the ancient world," lying across communication routes linking Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Far East and joining three continents and two oceans.[10]

From the fourth century BCE to the beginning of the seventh century CE, Persian culture from the east and Hellenistic culture from the west were major civilizational influences.[6] Under Byzantine rule, Christianity became central in the western Middle East, while Zoroastrianism functioned as the state religion and a major cultural force in Persia.[6] Across later centuries, the region's mosaic came to include Sunni and Shi'i Muslims, Alawis, Druze, Copts, Armenians, Maronites, Nestorian and other Christian groups, Jews, Zoroastrians, and Baha'is. Historians connect this diversity to varied landscapes, migrations, invasions, and distinct political and religious institutions.[5]

Islam arose in Arabia in the seventh century CE and rapidly transformed the political and cultural order of the region.[5] The early Muslim conquests contributed to the collapse of the Sasanid Empire in Iran and pushed the Byzantine Empire back toward Anatolia, fundamentally redrawing the map of power in the Middle East.[6] Various Islamic authorities subsequently governed most of the region; over the following centuries, Islamization deepened until most of the population had adopted Islam.[6]

The political history of the Islamic Middle East proceeded through the early caliphate, the Umayyad and Abbasid caliphates, a succession of regional dynasties, Seljuk rule, the Crusades, Mongol invasions, the Mamluks, and eventually the Ottoman Empire.[5] Mesopotamia in particular became a center of Islamic civilization and was governed for more than a thousand years by successive Islamic empires operating from different capitals.[6] The Ottoman conquest of Egypt in 1517 brought much of the Arab heartland under Ottoman rule, and the Ottoman Empire governed a multiethnic and multireligious territory until the early twentieth century.[5]

The Ottoman system recognized non-Muslim communities through the millet framework, under which Greek Orthodox, Armenian Gregorian, and Jewish communities could use their own languages, maintain religious and educational institutions, apply communal laws in many cases, and operate communal courts, although they remained subject to Ottoman political authority and taxation.[2] This was one imperial framework for governing the communal diversity that remained an enduring feature of the region.[5]

World War I shattered the Ottoman imperial order and inaugurated a century of rapid, often violent political transformation in the Middle East.[2] The Ottoman Empire's collapse led to the creation of two League of Nations mandates to govern former Ottoman territory: the Mandate for Syria and the Lebanon, and the Mandate for Palestine. Great Britain received administrative control over Mandatory Palestine, where English, Arabic, and Hebrew were official languages.[11] Britain and France established mandates across much of the Arab Middle East, creating new borders and administrations in Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, Transjordan, and Iraq.[2] These restructurings coincided with the rise of Arab, Turkish, Iranian, Armenian, and Jewish national movements.[2]

On November 29, 1947, the United Nations General Assembly voted to partition Mandatory Palestine into two new states, one Jewish and one Arab.[11] Jewish leaders accepted the recommendation while Arab leaders rejected it.[11] On May 14, 1948, David Ben-Gurion announced the formation of the State of Israel, and President Harry Truman recognized the new state the same day.[11] The establishment of Israel, the discovery of rich oil deposits in the Persian Gulf and Arabian Peninsula, and growing Western involvement became defining forces in the modern region.[6]

Oil transformed the region's relationship with the wider world during the twentieth century. Major petroleum-producing areas in Khuzistan in Iran, Mosul-Kirkuk in Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, and the Persian Gulf shaykhdoms gave the region exceptional strategic significance in an industrializing global economy.[2] The importance of routes including the Suez Canal, Red Sea, Persian Gulf, Turkish Straits, and Strait of Hormuz had already been recognized by European powers, but it increased sharply during the first half of the twentieth century as petroleum became increasingly valuable.[3] The Center for Israel Education identifies the world's largest known oil and gas reserves as one of three long-term forces shaping Middle Eastern history, alongside the region's geographic position and its role as the cradle of the three Abrahamic religions.[12]

A U.S. diplomatic assessment of the late 1970s identified the 1973 Arab-Israeli war, rapidly rising oil prices, the Iranian Revolution, the resurgence of politicized Islam and rejection of Western culture, and the Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty as events that fundamentally reoriented the region's politics and economics and, to a lesser extent, its military balance.[13] Increased Saudi oil wealth, an altered balance in the Persian Gulf, and the diminished role of Iran as a stabilizing force contributed further to regional uncertainty in that period.[13]

Jewish communities have existed continuously in parts of the Middle East and North Africa for more than 2,800 years.[14] A Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs analysis estimates the Jewish population across Iran, Iraq, Egypt, Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, Aden, Libya, Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia at approximately 1,001,000 in 1948, declining to roughly 30,110 by 2005, though those figures and their underlying explanations are approximate and contested.[15]

The World Jewish Congress reports that the displacement of these communities accelerated after the establishment of Israel. In the two decades following Israel's War of Independence, more than 850,000 Jews left homes in Syria, Egypt, Iraq, Yemen, Libya, Morocco, and other Arab countries. It identifies restrictive government measures and antisemitic hostility as major factors and states that property was sometimes seized by governments.[14] A U.S. congressional finding places the number displaced from Arab countries and Iran at approximately 850,000 and records American recognition of Jewish refugee claims and property losses alongside Palestinian refugee claims.[16]

A 1958–1959 survey reported major country-by-country population changes. Iraq's Jewish population fell from approximately 130,000 to perhaps 5,000 after mass emigration, chiefly to Israel, in 1950–1951, while Syria's fell from approximately 30,000 to about 5,500 after the rise of Israel.[17] An Iraqi law dated March 22, 1951, provided for the denationalization and sequestration of property belonging to Jews who had left individually on Iraqi passports and did not return within two months after their names were posted by Iraqi diplomatic or consular services. On November 30, 1958, Radio Baghdad announced that property sequestered under the law would be auctioned in Baghdad's central market the following day.[17] More than 40,000 Yemenite Jews were flown to Israel during a virtually total evacuation in 1949 and 1950, with Yemenite Jews having emigrated to Palestine since 1881.[17]

The survey estimated Egypt's Jewish population at perhaps 90,000 in 1947, between 40,000 and 50,000 in 1956, and approximately 15,000 remaining in Cairo and Alexandria after emigration accelerated following the 1956 Sinai campaign.[17] A decree of April 8, 1958, provided that Jews in certain categories who had left Egypt could be placed on lists of persons forbidden to reenter the country.[17] Lebanon's Jewish population was estimated at 6,000 to 6,500 in mid-1958. In June, rebel groups threatened to destroy Beirut's Jewish quarter; in September, Jews were arrested or kidnapped by Muslim extremists on several occasions; and by November, 500 Jews had emigrated to Latin American countries "in recent weeks," with another 500 having applied for admission to the United States.[17]

The same survey described Jews who remained in Arab countries during the late 1950s as often wealthy individuals with the most to lose by leaving or older people reluctant to uproot themselves from a familiar environment.[17] Jewish community functions were subject to stringent government control, Jewish economic activity was frequently hampered by policies of "Arabization," and in the United Arab Republic Muslim Arab supervisors were sometimes placed in charge of enterprises owned by foreigners, Christians, or Jews, with requirements to hire additional Muslim Arab employees.[17] Jews were subject to especially close and suspicious supervision because of the regional conflict with Israel.[17]

Yemen's Jews constituted the country's only indigenous religious minority, and profiles estimate that the community was once 50,000 to 60,000 strong. Almost all were relocated to Israel between 1948 and 1950.[18][17] A fifth-century Jewish kingdom had existed in Yemen; the community endured persecution during the nineteenth century and faced threats in 2007, when a Jewish community in northern Yemen was threatened and subjected to government relocation.[18] The Iranian Revolution of 1979–1980 produced another major wave of Jewish emigration, this time from Iran.[14] The Israeli government designated November 30 as a memorial day for the departure and expulsion of Jews from Arab countries and Iran — symbolically the day following November 29, the date of the 1947 UN Partition Plan.[14]

The Middle East-North Africa region held approximately 440 million residents in 2020, a 24% increase from 2010.[19] Muslims constituted 94% of the population, a figure that reflects the depth of Islamization over more than thirteen centuries.[19] Christians comprised approximately 3% of the population — roughly 13 million people — distributed across communities throughout the region.[19] Jews represented fewer than 2% of the regional total, approximately 7 million people, nearly all of whom lived in Israel.[19] Every major religious group in the region grew numerically between 2010 and 2020: the Muslim population reached an estimated 414 million, the Christian population approximately 13 million, and the Jewish population nearly 7 million.[19] The region's median age was approximately 25, while Jews living there — primarily in Israel — had a median age of approximately 31.[19]

Pew Research Center describes the region as the birthplace of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, a characterization echoed across multiple sources.[19] The National Library of Israel identifies Arabs as the largest ethnic and linguistic population, with Persians concentrated in Iran and neighboring countries and Turkish peoples in Turkey and Central Asia.[6] Among the region's recognized minorities are Kurds, Armenians, Samaritans, and Druze.[6] The Institute for National Security Studies identifies major communities using Arabic, Turkish, Persian, and other languages and characterizes the region as a mosaic shaped by varied landscapes, migrations, invasions, and distinct political and religious institutions.[8]

The internal diversity of the region's Muslim majority is itself substantial. Sunni and Shi'i Muslims, Alawis, and other communities hold distinct theological, political, and institutional identities that have shaped both intra-regional conflicts and patterns of alignment.[5] Alongside Muslim-majority societies, the region contains communities of Copts, Maronites, Armenians, Greek Orthodox, Nestorian and other Christians, Jews, Zoroastrians, Baha'is, and Druze, each with distinct histories of communal organization, legal status, and relations with the dominant political authorities of successive eras.[5]

The Middle East's position astride the Afro-Eurasian landmass, between Africa and Eurasia and between the Mediterranean world and South and East Asia, has made it a recurring focus of imperial, commercial, and strategic competition.[2] A 1947 U.S. diplomatic document articulates the enduring logic: the region joins three continents and two oceans, lies across communication routes linking Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Far East, and combines communications, military access, trade, and oil in a way that has sustained its strategic importance across different international systems.[10]

An Israeli government account characterizes the Middle East as having major geopolitical importance because it controls critical land and sea routes and has historically connected commercial and cultural networks between East and West. It says the region's strategic value increased sharply during the first half of the twentieth century as petroleum became economically important.[3] The Center for Israel Education identifies contemporary competition involving China, the United States, Russia, and regional Middle Eastern powers as the current expression of an enduring contest over politics and resources.[12]

The Institute for National Security Studies describes the region as a system containing not only the 21 sovereign states within its broad boundaries but also numerous sub-state and semi-state organizations, rival blocs and axes, and groupings formed around attitudes toward Israel and the West or around ideological orientations such as political Islam.[8] The same analysis cautions that simplified camp-based models fail to capture the full complexity of the regional system, including the roles of actors outside the main camps, Kurds, Christians, Israel's varied regional relationships, secularism, ethnic differentiation, and democratization.[8] In this framework, actors dynamically form temporary groupings according to differing interests rather than fixed alignments.[8]

The late 1970s reconfiguration of the regional order — produced by the 1973 Arab-Israeli war, rising oil prices, the Iranian Revolution, the resurgence of political Islam, and the Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty — reoriented the region's politics and economics and, to a lesser extent, its military balance.[13] The episode illustrated how rapidly the region's strategic landscape could shift and how developments there could produce consequences beyond its borders.[13]

The Middle East encompasses a range of political systems, economic structures, and social arrangements that defies reduction to a single characterization. The Institute for National Security Studies identifies among the region's states both monarchies and republics, varying degrees of authoritarianism and democratic practice, and distinct subregions — the Levant, the Maghreb, and the Gulf — each with its own political logic.[8] Arabs, Persians, Turks, Kurds, Jews, and other populations coexist within a regional system that also encompasses Sunni, Shia, and other Muslim communities alongside Christian, Jewish, Druze, and further religious minorities.[8]

Historian Jean-Pierre Filiu's political history treats power structures and political struggles as its central analytical thread, presenting the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as significant but only one part of a wider regional picture.[4] Similarly, the INSS analysis cautions against reducing regional dynamics to fixed camps, emphasizing the distinct interests of state and non-state actors and the temporary character of many alignments.[8]

The ecological diversity of the region has historically encouraged specialization and market exchange among communities inhabiting different landscapes.[9] Fertile river valleys, deserts, seacoasts, and the mountains of Iran and Anatolia formed the setting for both distinct traditions and sustained commercial and cultural contact.[2] This combination of diversity and connectivity helps explain the Middle East's continuing international significance.[2]

The geographic and conceptual boundaries of the Middle East have been contested since the term first entered wide use, and no universally accepted definition exists. Encyclopedia.com characterizes it as a standard Western term for West Asia and North Africa whose definition is elastic according to whether the context is geographical, political, or cultural.[1] Terms such as Near East, Middle East, Levant, West Asia, and Arab world overlap but are not interchangeable, and their usage has shifted across time and institutions.[5]

The Eurocentric origin of the term is widely acknowledged, including by an Israeli government account that describes the Middle East as part of a geographic vocabulary positioning Britain and Europe as the reference point.[3] Inhabitants of the region have adopted the term in practice, but criticism of its directional framing — which implies a vantage point in Western Europe — remains part of scholarly and diplomatic discussion.[6] The United Nations' promotion of "West Asia" as an alternative reflects this critique, though "Middle East" remains the most widely used modern designation.[5]

The disagreement over whether the term primarily describes a geographic zone, a cultural region, a political system, or a civilizational sphere is not merely academic. Different institutional frameworks produce different country lists and analytical conclusions about which actors belong to the regional system.[7][8] A congressional research definition that excludes Turkey while including Morocco and the West Bank produces a different regional picture from an Israeli government definition that includes Pakistan and Afghanistan.[3][7] These variations reflect differences in the purposes for which the concept is used and underscore that the Middle East is a constructed category rather than a territory with fixed natural frontiers.