Kalampedia

‘The Middle East’ is a modern English term for one of the most ancient regions of human civilisation. The history of the Middle East, therefore, is as old as our civilisation. But, before we go there, let’s just briefly talk about the term itself.

Before and during the First World War, ‘the Near East’, which comprised Turkey and the Balkans, the Levant and Egypt, was the term in more common use. ‘The Middle East’, if employed at all, referred to Arabia, the Gulf, Persia (Iran)/ Mesopotamia (Iraq) and Afghanistan. After the First World War, Allies had destroyed the Ottoman Turkish Empire and established their hegemony over its former Arab provinces, ‘the Middle East’ gradually came to encompass both areas.

The term ‘the Middle East’ is Eurocentric. For Indians and Chinese, it is more like the Middle West or West Asia. Similarly, the term ‘the Arab World’, now in common usage, excludes Israel and Iran which are also a key part of this region. As you can see, the conflict in the region begins from the name itself. And this one remains unresolved too. In any case, for the time being, it looks like ‘the Middle East’ will continue to be used. After all, it is not confined to European languages: in Arabic — Asharq al-Awsat — it is the title of the Saudi Arabian newspaper with the largest international circulation of all Arab newspapers.

Having made peace with the name, let’s now focus on the history of the Middle East.

The Ancient Past

Hammurabi, King of Babylon in the eighteenth century BC, formulated the first comprehensive code of law which has survived. Akhenaten, Pharoah of egypt in the fourteenth century BC, had the first conception of a single all-powerful deity. Some fifty years later Rameses II — ‘the Great’ — created an empire which covered most of the Middle East region.

In the huge arc of territory which stretches from the Euphrates around the northern edge of the Syrian Desert along the Mediterranean to the Nile Valley, much of the human history was made. It was the Fertile Crescent, because either river irrigation or winter rainfall nurtured productive farmland and settled populations. The central portion of this arc is the isthmus of land which connects Egypt with Anatolia (central Turkey). Bounded on the west by the Mediterranean and on the east by the Syrian Desert, it was later called the Levant. Today it comprises Lebanon, Israel and the western parts of Syria and Jordan. All the great powers of the ancient world fought over and occupied this stretch of land. It contains the oldest continuously inhabited towns on the earth, such as Jericho and Byblos (Jubail). It was the birthplace of Judaism and Christianity. The name of its most famous city, Jerusalem, still arouses more passionate responses than any other.

A short causeway along the eastern Mediterranean between Egypt and present-day Turkey was the scene of an astonishing and productive mixture of peoples and cultures. They came from all directions. The non-Semitic and highly civilised Sumerians from Mesopotamia dominated Syria for about a thousand years, from 3500 BC. They were defeated by the Semitic Amorites, nomads from central Arabia, but the Sumerians taught their conquerors how to write and how to farm the land. Babylonians in the middle of the third millennium were followed by Egyptians, who first conquered the coastal plain of Syria at about the same time. The Egyptians were frequently driven out by the new invaders such as the warlike Hittites from Asia Minor, who took all of Syria in 1450 BC, but just as often they returned and recovered control.

The settled inhabitants of Syria and Palestine were known as Canaanites from about 1600 BC. Almost certainly they did not constitute a single race but were formed through a mingling of peoples, some of whom came from the sea and some from the desert. They never created a powerful imperial state of their own; they submitted to the successive waves of conquerors, paid them tribute and traded with them. They were skillful workers in metal.

One people who came to settle on the Levant coast in about 1400 BC was the extraordinary seafaring Phoenicians, who established trading colonies on most of the Mediterranean shore and even on the Atlantic coasts of Europe and Africa. Carthage, Tyre and Sidon are the most famous of these. The name ‘Phoenician’ derives from the Greek word for purple — the Tyrian purple dye was renowned throughout the ancient world. Many Lebanese of today like to think of the Phoenicians as their ancestors.

Another wave of invaders came from central Arabia — the Aramaeans. By about 1200 BC, they had gained control over Damascus. They took their culture from the more civilised, settled inhabitants of Syria, but it was their Semitic language — Aramaic — which became the lingua franca of the region and was spoken by Jesus Christ a thousand years later.

Then came the Hebrews and laid the foundations of Judaism in the region. More on this and the history of the Middle East in the next post.

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