History of the Middle East

A map showing territories commonly considered part of the Near East

The Middle East, also known as the Near East, is home to one of the cradles of civilization and has seen many of the world's oldest cultures and civilizations. The region's history started from the earliest human settlements and continues through several major pre- and post-Islamic Empires to today's nation-states of the Middle East.

The Sumerians, around the 5th millennium BC, were among the first to develop the contemporary notion of a civilization. By 3150 BC, Egyptian civilization had unified under its first pharaoh. Mesopotamia hosted powerful empires, notably the Assyrian Empires (1365–1076 BC and 911–609 BC). From the 7th century BC, the region was dominated by Iranian powers, including the Achaemenid Empire. In the 1st century BC, the Roman Republic expanded to include much of the Near East, and the Byzantine Empire later ruled from the Balkans to the Euphrates, increasingly defined by and dogmatic about Christianity. Between the 3rd and 7th centuries AD, the Middle East was dominated by the Byzantines and the Sasanian Empire. From the 7th century onward, Islam began to shape the region, bringing a new cultural and religious identity. The Seljuq dynasty displaced Arab dominance in the mid-11th century, followed by the Mongol invasions in the 13th century. By the 15th century, the Ottoman Empire, rooted in western Anatolia, rose to prominence, capturing Constantinople in 1453 and establishing a lasting sultanate.

Large parts of the Middle East were contested between the Ottomans and the Safavid dynasty from the early 16th century. By 1700, the Ottomans had been pushed out of Hungary, shifting the power balance towards the West. The British Empire gained control over the Persian Gulf, while French colonial empire extended into Lebanon and Syria. In 1912, Italy took Libya and the Dodecanese islands. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Middle Eastern rulers sought modernization to match European powers. A key moment came with the discovery of oil, first in Persia (1908), then in Saudi Arabia (1938), the Persian Gulf states, Libya, and Algeria, leading to increased Western and later American interest in the region.

In the 1920s to 1940s, Syria and Egypt pursued independence. The British, French, and Soviets withdrew from much of the Middle East during and after World War II. The Arab–Israeli conflict in Palestine culminated in the 1947 United Nations plan to partition Palestine. Amid Cold War tensions, pan-Arabism emerged in Western Asia and Northern Africa. The end of European control, the establishment of Israel, and the rise of the petroleum industry shaped the modern Middle East. Despite economic growth, many countries faced challenges like political restrictions, corruption, cronyism and overreliance on oil. The wealthiest per capita are the small, oil-rich Persian Gulf states: Qatar, Kuwait, Bahrain, and the UAE.

Several key events shaped the modern Middle East: the 1967 Six-Day War, the 1973 OPEC oil embargo in response to US support for Israel in the Yom Kippur War, and the rise of Salafism/Wahhabism in Saudi Arabia that led to rise of Islamism. Additionally, the Iranian Revolution contributed to a significant Islamic revival (Tajdid). The dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 shifted global focus from the Cold War to the War on Terror. In the early 2010s, the Arab Spring triggered major protests and revolutions in the region. Clashes in western Iraq in 2013, set the stage for the Islamic State (ISIL) uprising.

The term Near East can be used interchangeably with Middle East, but in a different context, especially in discussing ancient history, it may have a limited meaning, namely the northern historically-Aramaic-speaking Semitic people area and adjacent Anatolian territories, marked in the two maps below.

  The limited modern archaeological and historical context of the Near East

  Middle East and Near East

The historical Semitic region, defined by the pre-Islamic distribution of Semitic languages and coinciding very roughly with the Arabian Plate. Not so much lingually but rather culturally, politically and historically, the most significant division here has been between the north and the south, which is to some degree isolated from each other by the sparsely-populated Arabian Desert. The north comprises Mesopotamia and the Levant, which, together with the lower Nile, constitute the Fertile Crescent.

General

Geographically, the Middle East can be thought of as Western Asia with the addition of Egypt (which is the non-Maghreb region of Northern Africa) and with the exclusion of the Caucasus. The Middle East was the first to experience a Neolithic Revolution (c. the 10th millennium BCE), as well as the first to enter the Bronze Age (c. 3300–1200 BC) and Iron Age (c. 1200–500 BC).

Historically human populations have tended to settle around bodies of water, which is reflected in modern population density patterns. Irrigation systems were extremely important for the agricultural Middle East: for Egypt that of the lower Nile River, and for Mesopotamia that of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. Levantine agriculture depended on precipitation rather than on the river-based irrigation of Egypt and Mesopotamia, resulting in preference for different crops. Since travel was faster and easier by sea, civilizations along the Mediterranean, such as Phoenicia and later Greece, participated in intense trade. Similarly, Ancient Yemen, being much more conducive to agriculture than the rest of the Arabian Peninsula, sea traded heavily with the Horn of Africa, some of which it lingually Semitized. The Adnanite Arabs, inhabiting the drier desert areas of the Middle East, were all nomadic pastoralists before some began settling in city states, with the geo-linguistic distribution today being divided between Persian Gulf, the Najd and the Hejaz in the Peninsula, as well as the Bedouin areas beyond the Peninsula.

Since ancient times the Middle East has had several lingua franca: Akkadian (c. 14th–8th century BC), Hebrew (c. 5th century BC – 2nd century AD), Aramaic (c. 8th century BC – 8th century AD), Greek (c. 4th century BC – 8th century AD), and Arabic (c. 8th century AD – present). Familiarity with English is not uncommon among the middle and upper classes. Arabic is not commonly spoken in Turkey, Iran, and Israel, and some varieties of Arabic lack mutual intelligibility, thus qualifying as distinct languages by this linguistic criterion.

The Middle East was the birthplace of the Abrahamic, Gnostic, and most Iranian religions. Initially the ancient inhabitants of the region followed various ethnic religions, but most of those began to be gradually replaced at first by Christianity (even before the 313 AD Edict of Milan) and finally by Islam (after the spread of the Muslim conquests beyond the Arabian Peninsula in 634 AD). To this day, however, the Middle East has, in particular, some sizable, ethnically distinct Christian minority groups, as well as Jews, concentrated in Israel, and followers of Iranian religions, such as Yazdânism and Zoroastrianism. Some of the smaller ethnoreligious minorities include the Shabak people, the Mandaeans and the Samaritans. It is somewhat controversial whether the Druze religion is a distinct religion in its own right or merely a part of the Ismailist branch of Shia Islam.

Prehistoric Near East

See also: Prehistoric Egypt, Prehistory of Iran, Prehistory of the Southern Levant, Prehistoric Cyprus, Natufian culture, History of agriculture, Timeline of Middle Eastern history, and Timeline of human prehistory

Area of the fertile crescent, circa 7500 BC, with main sites of the Pre-Pottery Neolithic period. The area of Mesopotamia proper was not yet settled by humans.

The Arabian Tectonic Plate was part of the African Plate during much of the Phanerozoic Eon (Paleozoic–Cenozoic), until the Oligocene Epoch of the Cenozoic Era. Red Sea rifting began in the Eocene, but the separation of Africa and Arabia occurred in the Oligocene, and since then the Arabian Plate has been slowly moving toward the Eurasian Plate.

The collision between the Arabian Plate and Eurasia is pushing up the Zagros Mountains of Iran. Because the Arabian Plate and Eurasia plate collide, many cities are in danger such as those in southeastern Turkey (which is on the Arabian Plate). These dangers include earthquakes, tsunamis, and volcanoes.

The earliest human migrations out of Africa occurred through the Middle East, namely over the Levantine corridor, with the pre-modern Homo erectus about 1.8 million years BP. One of the potential routes for early human migrations toward southern and eastern Asia is Iran.

Haplogroup J-P209, the most common human Y-chromosome DNA haplogroup in the Middle East today, is believed to have arisen in the region 31,700 ± 12,800 years ago. The two main current subgroups, J-M267 and J-M172, which now comprise between them almost all of the population of the haplogroup, are both believed to have arisen very early, at least 10,000 years ago. Nonetheless, Y-chromosomes F-M89* and IJ-M429* were reported to have been observed in the Iranian plateau.

There is evidence of rock carvings along the Nile terraces and in desert oases. In the 10th millennium BC, a culture of hunter-gatherers and fishermen was replaced by a grain-grinding culture. Climate changes and/or overgrazing around 6000 BC began to desiccate the pastoral lands of Egypt, forming the Sahara. Early tribal peoples migrated to the Nile River, where they developed a settled agricultural economy and more centralized society.

Neolithic agriculturalists, who may have resided in Northeast Africa and the Near East, may have been the source population for lactase persistence variants, including ‍–‍13910*T, and may have been subsequently supplanted by later migrations of peoples. The Sub-Saharan West African Fulani, the North African Tuareg, and European agriculturalists, who are descendants of these Neolithic agriculturalists, share the lactase persistence variant ‍–‍13910*T. While shared by Fulani and Tuareg herders, compared to the Tuareg variant, the Fulani variant of ‍–‍13910*T has undergone a longer period of haplotype differentiation. The Fulani lactase persistence variant ‍–‍13910*T may have spread, along with cattle pastoralism, between 9686 BP and 7534 BP, possibly around 8500 BP; corroborating this timeframe for the Fulani, by at least 7500 BP, there is evidence of herders engaging in the act of milking in the Central Sahara.

Ancient Near East

Main articles: Ancient Near East and Ancient history

See also: Chronology of the ancient Near East

The symbol of the winged sun was found throughout the Middle East. It was associated with divinity, royalty, and power. The symbol shown above is an Egyptian version. The modern-day Assyrian and Aramean flags feature different versions of the symbol. The Israelite royal Seals of Hezekiah also featured one, sometimes flanked on either side with the Egyptian ankh symbol. The Iranian kingdom has a related symbol called Faravahar which mistakenly is being called as the symbol of Zoroastrianism.

The ancient Near East was the first to practice intensive year-round agriculture and currency-mediated trade (as opposed to barter), gave the rest of the world the first writing system, invented the potter's wheel and then the vehicular and mill wheel, created the first centralized governments and law codes, served as birthplace to the first city-states with their high degree of division of labor, as well as laying the foundation for the fields of astronomy and mathematics. However, its empires also introduced rigid social stratification, slavery, and organized warfare.

Cradle of civilization, Sumer and Akkad

The earliest civilizations in history were established in the region now known as the Middle East around 3500 BC by the Sumerians, in southern Mesopotamia (modern-day Iraq), widely regarded as the cradle of civilization. The Sumerians and the Akkadians—who extended their empire to northern Mesopotamia (now northern Syria)—and later Babylonians and Assyrians all flourished in this region.

"In the course of the fourth millennium BC, city-states developed in southern Mesopotamia that were dominated by temples whose priests represented the cities' patron deities. The most prominent of the city-states was Sumer, which gave its language to the area, [presumably the first written language,] and became the first great civilization of mankind. About 2340 BC, Sargon the Great (c. 2360–2305 BC) united the city-states in the south and founded the Akkadian dynasty, the world's first empire."

During this same time period, Sargon the Great appointed his daughter, Enheduanna, as High Priestess of Inanna at Ur. Her writings, which established her as the first known author in world history, also helped cement Sargon's position in the region.

Egypt

Main article: Ancient Egypt

Statue of Ramesses II of Egypt in Luxor.

Soon after the Sumerian civilization began, the Nile valley of Lower and Upper Egypt was unified under the Pharaohs approximately around 3150 BC. Since then, Ancient Egypt experienced 3 high points of civilization, the so-called "Kingdom" periods:

• The Old Kingdom (2686–2181),
• The Middle Kingdom (2055–1650) and, most notably,
• The New Kingdom (1550–1069).

The history of Ancient Egypt is concluded by the Late Period (664–332 BC), immediately followed by the history of Egypt in Classical Antiquity, beginning with Ptolemaic Egypt.

The Levant and Anatolia

Main articles: History of the ancient Levant and History of Anatolia

Thereafter, civilization quickly spread through the Fertile Crescent to the east coast of the Mediterranean Sea and throughout the Levant, as well as to ancient Anatolia. Ancient Levantine kingdoms and city states included Ebla City, Ugarit City, Kingdom of Aram-Damascus, Kingdom of Israel, Kingdom of Judah, Kingdom of Ammon, Kingdom of Moab, Kingdom of Edom, and the Nabatean kingdom. The Phoenician civilization, encompassing several city states, was a maritime trading culture that established colonial cities in the Mediterranean Basin, most notably Carthage, in 814 BC.

Assyrian empires

Main article: Assyria

Mesopotamia was home to several powerful empires that came to rule almost the entire Middle East—particularly the Assyrian Empires of 1365–1076 BC and the Neo-Assyrian Empire of 911–605 BC. The Assyrian Empire, at its peak, was the largest the world had seen. It ruled all of what is now Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Israel, Palestine, Kuwait, Jordan, Egypt, Cyprus, and Bahrain—with large swathes of Iran, Turkey, Armenia, Georgia, Sudan, and Arabia. "The Assyrian empires, particularly the third, had a profound and lasting impact on the Near East. Before Assyrian hegemony ended, the Assyrians brought the highest civilization to the then known world. From the Caspian to Cyprus, from Anatolia to Egypt, Assyrian imperial expansion would bring into the Assyrian sphere nomadic and barbaric communities, and would bestow the gift of civilization upon them."

Neo-Babylonian and Persian empires

Main articles: Babylonia and Persian Empire

From the early 6th century BC onwards, several Persian states dominated the region, beginning with the Medes and non-Persian Neo-Babylonian Empire, then their successor the Achaemenid Empire known as the first Persian Empire, conquered in the late 4th century BC by the very short-lived Macedonian Empire of Alexander the Great, and then successor kingdoms such as Ptolemaic Egypt and the Seleucid state in Western Asia.

After a century of hiatus, the idea of the Persian Empire was revived by the Parthians in the 3rd century BC—and continued by their successors, the Sassanids from the 3rd century AD. This empire dominated sizable parts of what is now the Asian part of the Middle East and continued to influence the rest of the Asiatic and African Middle East region, until the Arab Muslim conquest of Persia in the mid-7th century AD. Between the 1st century BC and the early 7th century AD, the region was completely dominated by the Romans and the Parthians and Sassanids on the other hand, which often culminated in various Roman-Persian Wars over the seven centuries. Eastern Rite, Church of the East Christianity took hold in Persian-ruled Mesopotamia, particularly in Assyria from the 1st century AD onwards, and the region became a center of a flourishing Syriac–Assyrian literary tradition.

Greek and Roman Empire

Main articles: Macedonian Empire and Roman Empire

The Roman Empire at its greatest extent, under Trajan, 117 AD

In 66–63 BC, the Roman general Pompey conquered much of the Middle East. The Roman Empire united the region with most of Europe and North Africa in a single political and economic unit. Even areas not directly annexed were strongly influenced by the Empire, which was the most powerful political and cultural entity for centuries. Though Roman culture spread across the region, the Greek culture and language first established in the region by the Macedonian Empire continued to dominate throughout the Roman period. Cities in the Middle East, especially Alexandria, became major urban centers for the Empire and the region became the Empire's "bread basket" as the key agricultural producer. Ægyptus was by far the most wealthy Roman province.

During the time that mystery cults were introduced to the region, traditional religions were often criticized and the cults gained societal influence. These cults formed around gods like Cybele, Isis, and Mithra.

Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem: Jerusalem is generally considered the cradle of Christianity.

As the Christian religion spread throughout the Roman and Persian Empires, it took root in the Middle East, and cities such as Alexandria and Edessa became important centers of Christian scholarship. By the 5th century, Christianity was the dominant religion in the Middle East, with other faiths (gradually including heretical Christian sects) being actively repressed. The Middle East's ties to the city of Rome were gradually severed as the Empire split into East and West, with the Middle East tied to the new Roman capital of Constantinople. The subsequent Fall of the Western Roman Empire therefore, had minimal direct impact on the region.

Byzantine Empire (Eastern Roman Empire)

Main article: Byzantine Empire

The Eastern Roman Empire, today commonly known as the Byzantine Empire, ruling from the Balkans to the Euphrates, became increasingly defined by and dogmatic about Christianity, gradually creating religious rifts between the doctrines dictated by the establishment in Constantinople and believers in many parts of the Middle East. By this time, Greek had become the 'lingua franca' of the region, although ethnicities such as the Syriacs and the Hebrew continued to exist. Under Byzantine/Greek rule the area of the Levant met an era of stability and prosperity.

Medieval Middle East

Further information: Post-classical history

Pre-Islam

In the 5th century, the Middle East was separated into small, weak states; the two most prominent were the Sasanian Empire of the Persians in what is now Iran and Iraq, and the Byzantine Empire in Anatolia (modern-day Turkey) and the Levant. The Byzantines and Sasanians fought with each other a reflection of the rivalry between the Roman Empire and the Persian Empire seen during the previous five hundred years. The Byzantine-Sasanian rivalry was also seen through their respective cultures and religions. The Byzantines considered themselves champions of Hellenism and Christianity. Meanwhile, the Sasanians thought themselves heroes of ancient Iranian traditions and of the traditional Persian religion, Zoroastrianism.

Map of the Roman–Persian frontier after the division of Armenia in 384. The frontier remained stable throughout the 5th century.

The Arabian peninsula already played a role in the power struggles of the Byzantines and Sasanians. While Byzantium allied itself with the Kingdom of Aksum in the horn of Africa, the Sasanian Empire assisted the Himyarite Kingdom in what is now Yemen (southwest Arabia). Thus the clash between the kingdoms of Aksum and Himyar in 525 displayed a higher power struggle between Byzantium and Persia for control of the Red Sea trade. Territorial wars soon became common, with the Byzantines and Sasanians fighting over upper Mesopotamia and Armenia and key cities that facilitated trade from Arabia, India, and China. Byzantium, as the continuation of the Eastern Roman Empire, continued control of the latter's territories in the Middle East. Since 527, this included Anatolia, Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, and Egypt. In 603 the Sasanians invaded, conquering Damascus and Egypt. It was Emperor Heraclius who was able to repel these invasions, and in 628 he replaced the Sasanian Great King with a more docile one. The fighting weakened both states, leaving the stage open to a new power.

The nomadic Bedouin tribes dominated the Arabian desert, where they worshipped idols and remained in small clans tied together by kinship. Urbanization and agriculture was limited in Arabia, save for a few regions near the coast. Mecca and Medina (then called Yathrib) were two such cities that were important hubs for trade between Africa and Eurasia. This commerce was central to city-life, where most inhabitants were merchants. Nevertheless, some Arabs saw it fit to migrate to the northern regions of the Fertile Crescent, a region so named for its place between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers that offered it fertile land. This included entire tribal chiefdoms such as the Lakhmids in a less controlled area of the Sasanian Empire, and the Ghassanids in a similar area inside of Byzantine territory; these political units of Arab origin offered a surprising stability that was rare in the region and offered Arabia further connections to the outside world. The Lakhmid capital, Hira was a center for Christianity and Jewish craftsmen, merchants, and farmers were common in western Arabia as were Christian monks in central Arabia. Thus pre-Islamic Arabia was no stranger to Abrahamic religions or monotheism, for that matter.

Islamic caliphate

See also: Caliphate, Early Muslim conquests, and Iranian Intermezzo

Age of the Caliphs

  Expansion under Muhammad, 622–632

  Expansion during the Rashidun Caliphate, 632–661

  Expansion during the Umayyad Caliphate, 661–750

While the Byzantine Roman and Sassanid Persian empires were both weakened by warfare (602–628), a new power in the form of Islam grew in the Middle East. In a series of rapid Muslim conquests, Arab armies, led by the Caliphs and skilled military commanders such as Khalid ibn al-Walid, swept through most of the Middle East, taking more than half of Byzantine territory and completely engulfing the Persian lands. In Anatolia, they were stopped in the Siege of Constantinople (717–718) by the Byzantines, who were helped by the Bulgarians.

The Byzantine provinces of Roman Syria, North Africa, and Sicily, however, could not mount such a resistance, and the Muslim conquerors swept through those regions. At the far west, they crossed the sea taking Visigothic Hispania before being halted in southern France in the Battle of Tours by the Franks. At its greatest extent, the Arab Empire was the first empire to control the entire Middle East, as well three-quarters of the Mediterranean region, the only other empire besides the Roman Empire to control most of the Mediterranean Sea. It would be the Arab Caliphates of the Middle Ages that would first unify the entire Middle East as a distinct region and create the dominant ethnic identity that persists today. The Seljuq Empire would also later dominate the region.

Much of North Africa became a peripheral area to the main Muslim centres in the Middle East, but Iberia (Al-Andalus) and Morocco soon broke away from this distant control and founded one of the world's most advanced societies at the time, along with Baghdad in the eastern Mediterranean. Between 831 and 1071, the Emirate of Sicily was one of the major centres of Islamic culture in the Mediterranean. After its conquest by the Normans the island developed its own distinct culture with the fusion of Arab, Western, and Byzantine influences. Palermo remained a leading artistic and commercial centre of the Mediterranean well into the Middle Ages.

Africa was reviving, however, as more organized and centralized states began to form in the later Middle Ages after the Renaissance of the 12th century. Motivated by religion and conquest, the kings of Europe launched a number of Crusades to try to roll back Muslim power and retake the Holy Land. The Crusades were unsuccessful but were far more effective in weakening the already tottering Byzantine Empire. They also rearranged the balance of power in the Muslim world as Egypt once again emerged as a major power.

Islamic culture and science

Main articles: Islamic Golden Age, Early social changes under Islam, and Science in the medieval Islamic world

The interior of the former mosque of Córdoba, showing its distinctive arches.

Religion always played a prevalent role in Middle Eastern culture, affecting learning, architecture, and the ebb and flow of cultures. When Muhammad introduced Islam, it jump-started Middle Eastern culture, inspiring achievements in architecture, the revival of old advances in science and technology, and the formation of a distinct way of life. Islam primarily consisted of the five pillars of belief, including confession of faith, the five prayers a day, to fast during the holy month of Ramadan, to pay the tax for charity (the zakāt), and the hajj, or the pilgrimage that a Muslim needed to take at least once in their lifetime, according to the five (or six) pillars of Islam. Islam also created the need for spectacularly built mosques which created a distinct form of architecture. Some of the more magnificent mosques include Al-Aqsa and the former Mosque of Cordoba. Islam unified the Middle East and helped the empires there to remain stable. Missionaries and warriors spread the religion from Arabia to North and Sudanic Africa, South and Southeast Asia, and the Mesopotamia area. This created a mix of cultures, especially in Africa, and the mawali demographic. Although the mawali would experience discrimination from the Umayyad, they would gain widespread acceptance from the Abbasids and it was because of this that allowed for mass conversions in foreign areas. "People of the book" or dhimmi were always treated well; these people included Christians, Jews, Hindus, and Zoroastrians. However, the crusades started a new thinking in the Islamic empires, that non-Islamic ideas were immoral or inferior; this was primarily perpetrated by the ulama (علماء) scholars.

Arabian culture took off during the early Abbasid age, despite the prevalent political issues. Muslims saved and spread Greek advances in medicine, algebra, geometry, astronomy, anatomy, and ethics that would later find its way back to Western Europe. The works of Aristotle, Galen, Hippocrates, Ptolemy, and Euclid were saved and distributed throughout the empire (and eventually into Europe) in this manner. Muslim scholars also discovered the Hindu–Arabic numeral system in their conquests of south Asia. The use of this system in Muslim trade and political institutions allowed for the eventual popularization of it around the world; this number system would be critical to the Scientific Revolution in Europe. Muslim intellectuals would become experts in chemistry, optics, and mapmaking during the Abbasid Caliphate. In the arts, Abbasid architecture expanded upon Umayyad architecture, with larger and more extravagant mosques. Persian literature grew based on ethical values. Astronomy was stressed in art. Much of this learning would find its way to the West. This was especially true during the crusades, as warriors would bring back Muslim treasures, weapons, and medicinal methods.

Turks, Crusaders, and Mongols

See also: Crusades, Mongol conquests, and History of Jerusalem

The dominance of the Arabs came to a sudden end in the mid-11th century with the arrival of the Seljuq Turks, migrating south from the Turkic homelands in Central Asia. They conquered Persia, Iraq (capturing Baghdad in 1055), Syria, Palestine, and the Hejaz. Egypt held out under the Fatimid caliphs until 1169, when it too fell to the Turks.

Despite massive territorial losses in the 7th century, the Christian Byzantine Empire continued to be a potent military and economic force in the Mediterranean, preventing Arab expansion into much of Europe. The Seljuqs' defeat of the Byzantine military in the Battle of Manzikert in the 11th century and settling in Anatolia effectively marked the end of Byzantine power. The Seljuks ruled most of the Middle East region for the next 200 years, but their empire soon broke up into a number of smaller sultanates.

Christian Western Europe staged a remarkable economic and demographic recovery in the 11th century since its nadir in the 7th century. The fragmentation of the Middle East allowed joined forces, mainly from England, France, and the emerging Holy Roman Empire, to enter the region. In 1095, Pope Urban II responded to pleas from the flagging Byzantine Empire and summoned the European aristocracy to recapture the Holy Land for Christianity. In 1099 the knights of the First Crusade captured Jerusalem and founded the Kingdom of Jerusalem, which survived until 1187, when Saladin, the founder of the Ayyubid dynasty, retook the city. Smaller crusader kingdoms and fiefdoms survived until 1291.

Mongol rule

Main articles: Ilkhanate and Mongol invasions and conquests § West Asia

The conquest of Baghdad and the death of the caliph in 1258 officiated the end of the Abbasid Caliphate and annexed its territories to the Mongol Empire, excluding Mamluk Egypt and the majority of Arabia. When the Khagan (or Great Khan) of the Mongol Empire, Möngke Khan, died in 1259, any further expansion by Hulegu was halted, as he had to return to the Mongol capital Karakorum for the election of a new khagan. His absence resulted in the first defeat of the Mongols (by the Mamluk Egyptians) during the Battle of Ain Jalut in 1260. Issues began to arise when the Mongols grew increasingly unable to reach a consensus as to whom to elect khagan. Additionally, societal clashing occurred between traditionalists who wished to retain their nomadic culture and Mongols moving towards sedentary agriculture. All of this led to the fragmentation of the empire in 1260. Hulegu carved out his Middle Eastern territory into the independent Ilkhanate, which included most of Armenia, Anatolia, Azerbaijan, Mesopotamia, and Iran.

Statue of Baybars of Egypt in Cairo.

The Mongols eventually retreated in 1335, but the chaos that ensued throughout the empire deposed the Seljuq Turks. In 1401, the region was further plagued by the Turko-Mongol, Timur, and his ferocious raids. By then, another group of Turks had arisen as well, the Ottomans. Based in Anatolia, by 1566 they would conquer the Iraq-Iran region, the Balkans, Greece, Byzantium, most of Egypt, most of north Africa, and parts of Arabia, unifying them under the Ottoman Empire. The rule of the Ottoman sultans marked the end of the Medieval (Postclassical) Era in the Middle East.

Early Modern Near East

Further information: Early modern period

The Ottoman Empire (1299–1918)

See also: Ottoman Empire

The Ottoman Empire at its greatest extent in the Middle East, including its client states.

Selim the Grim, Ottoman conqueror of the Middle East

By the early 15th century, a new power had arisen in western Anatolia, the Ottoman Empire. In 1453 Ottoman khans captured the Christian Byzantine capitol of Constantinople and made themselves sultans. The Mamluks held the Ottomans out of the Middle East for a century, but in 1514 Selim the Grim began the systematic Ottoman conquest of the region. Syria was occupied in 1516 and Egypt in 1517, extinguishing the Mameluk line. Iraq was conquered almost in 40 years from the Iranian Safavids, who were successors of the Aq Qoyunlu.

The Ottomans united the whole region under one ruler for the first time since the reign of the Abbasid caliphs of the 10th century, and they kept control of it for 400 years, despite brief intermissions created by the Iranian Safavids and Afsharids. By this time the Ottomans also held Greece, the Balkans, and most of Hungary, setting the new frontier between east and west far to the north of the Danube. Regions such as Albania and Bosnia saw many conversions to Islam, but Ottoman Europe was not culturally absorbed into the Muslim world.

Rivalry with the West

By 1699, the Ottomans had been driven out of Hungary, Poland-Lithuania and parts of the western Balkans in the Great Turkish War. In the Great Divergence, Europe had overtaken the Muslim world in wealth, population and technology. Some historians argue that science had already been in decline in the Muslim world since the 14th century while other argue that sciences still continued until the 17th century. The Industrial Revolution and growth of capitalism magnified the divergence, and from 1768 to 1918, the Ottomans gradually lost territory.

Greece, Serbia, Romania, and Bulgaria achieved independence during the 19th century, and the Ottoman Empire became known as the "sick man of Europe", increasingly under the financial control of European powers. Domination soon turned to outright conquest: the French annexed Algeria in 1830 and Tunisia in 1878 and the British occupied Egypt in 1882, though it remained under nominal Ottoman sovereignty. In the Balkan Wars of 1912–13 the Ottomans were driven out of Europe altogether, except for the city of Constantinople and its hinterland.

The British also established effective control of the Persian Gulf, and the French extended their influence into Lebanon and Syria. In 1912, the Italians seized Libya and the Dodecanese islands, just off the coast of the Ottoman heartland of Anatolia. The Ottomans turned to Germany to protect them from the western powers, but the result was increasing financial and military dependence on Germany.

Ottoman reform efforts

Middle East Map, 1916

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Middle Eastern rulers tried to modernize their states to compete more effectively with Europe. In the Ottoman Empire, the Tanzimat reforms re-invigorated Ottoman rule and were furthered by the Young Ottomans in the late 19th century, leading to the First Constitutional Era in the Empire that included the writing of the 1876 constitution and the establishment of the Ottoman Parliament. The authors of the 1906 revolution in Persia all sought to import versions of the western model of constitutional government, civil law, secular education, and industrial development into their countries. Throughout the region, railways and telegraph lines were constructed, schools and universities were opened, and a new class of army officers, lawyers, teachers, and administrators emerged, challenging the traditional leadership of Islamic scholars.

This first Ottoman constitutional experiment ended soon after it began, however, when the autocratic Sultan Abdul Hamid II abolished the parliament and the constitution in favor of personal rule. Abdul Hamid ruled by decree for the next 30 years, stirring democratic resentment. The reform movement known as the Young Turks emerged in the 1890s against his rule, which included massacres against minorities. The Young Turks seized power in the 1908 Young Turk Revolution and established the Second Constitutional Era, leading to pluralist and multiparty elections in the Empire for the first time in 1908. The Young Turks split into two parties, the pro-German and pro-centralization Committee of Union and Progress and the pro-British and pro-decentralization Freedom and Accord Party. The former was led by an ambitious pair of army officers, Ismail Enver Bey (later Pasha) and Ahmed Cemal Pasha, and a radical lawyer, Mehmed Talaat Bey (later Pasha). After a power struggle between the two parties of Young Turks, the Committee emerged victorious and became a ruling junta, with Talaat as Grand Vizier and Enver as War Minister, and established a German-funded modernisation program across the Empire.

Ibrahim Pasha of Egypt

Enver Bey's alliance with Germany, which he considered the most advanced military power in Europe, was enabled by British demands that the Ottoman Empire cede their formal capital Edirne (Adrianople) to the Bulgarians after losing the First Balkan War, which the Turks saw as a betrayal by Britain. These demands cost Britain the support of the Turks, as the pro-British Freedom and Accord Party was now repressed under the pro-German Committee for, in Enver's words, "shamefully delivering the country to the enemy" (Britain) after agreeing to the demands to give up Edirne.

20th century

Further information: Modern history

Final years of the Ottoman Empire

See also: Partitioning of the Ottoman Empire, French Mandate for Syria and the Lebanon, Mandatory Palestine, Mandatory Iraq, Modern history of Cyprus, Protectorate of Cyprus, and List of modern conflicts in the Middle East

Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, Ottoman general and the founder of modern Turkey

In 1878, as the result of the Cyprus Convention, the United Kingdom took over the government of Cyprus as a protectorate from the Ottoman Empire. While the Cypriots at first welcomed British rule, hoping that they would gradually achieve prosperity, democracy and national liberation, they soon became disillusioned. The British imposed heavy taxes to cover the compensation they paid to the Sultan for conceding Cyprus to them. Moreover, the people were not given the right to participate in the administration of the island, since all powers were reserved to the High Commissioner and to London.

Meanwhile, the fall of the Ottomans and the partitioning of Anatolia by the Allies led to resistance by the Turkish population, under the Turkish National Movement led by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the Turkish victory against the invading powers during the Turkish War of Independence, and the founding of the modern Republic of Turkey in 1923. Atatürk, the Republic's first President, embarked on a program of modernisation and secularisation that pushed Turkey both economically and culturally closer to Europe and away from the Arab world. He abolished the caliphate, emancipated women, enforced western dress and the use of a new Turkish alphabet based on Latin script in place of the Arabic alphabet, and abolished the jurisdiction of the Islamic courts.

Another turning point came when oil was discovered, first in Persia (1908) and later in Saudi Arabia (1938) as well as the other Persian Gulf states, Libya, and Algeria. The Middle East, it turned out, possessed the world's largest easily untapped reserves of crude oil, the most important commodity in the 20th century. The discovery of oil in the region made many of the kings and emirs of the Middle East immensely wealthy and enabled them to consolidate their hold on power while giving them a stake in preserving western hegemony over the region.

As the West became dependent on Middle Eastern oil exports and British influence steadily declined, American interest in the region grew. Initially, Western oil companies established a dominance over oil production and extraction. However, indigenous movements towards nationalizing oil assets, oil sharing, and the advent of OPEC ensured a shift in the balance of power towards the Arab oil states.

World War I

In 1914, Enver Pasha's alliance with Germany led the Ottoman Empire into the fatal step of entering World War I on the side of the Central Powers against the Entente, an alliance that included Russia, Great Britain and France. The British saw the Ottomans as the weak link in the enemy alliance, and concentrated on knocking them out of the war. When a direct assault failed at Gallipoli in 1916, they turned to fomenting revolution in the Ottoman domains, exploiting the awakening force of Arab, Armenian, and Assyrian nationalism against the Ottomans.

The British found an ally in Sharif Hussein, the hereditary ruler of Mecca believed by many to be a descendant of Muhammad, who led an Arab Revolt against Ottoman rule, after being promised independence.

The Entente won the war and the Ottoman Empire was abolished with most of its territories ceded to Britain and France; Turkey just managed to survive. The war transformed the region in terms of shattering Ottoman power which was supplanted by increased British and French involvement; the creation of the Middle Eastern state system as seen in Turkey and Saudi Arabia; the emergence of explicitly more nationalist politics, as seen in Turkey and Egypt; and the expansion of oil industry, particularly in the Gulf States.

Ottoman defeat and partition (1918–1922)

Main article: Partition of the Ottoman Empire

When the Ottoman Empire surrendered to the Allies in 1918, the Arab patriots did not get what they had expected. Islamic activists of more recent times have described it as an Anglo-French betrayal. The governments of the European Entente had concluded a secret treaty before the armistice, the Sykes–Picot Agreement, partitioning the Middle East amongst themselves. The British had in 1917, endorsed the Balfour Declaration promising the international Zionist movement their support in re-creating the historic Jewish homeland in Palestine.

After the Ottomans withdrew, Arab leaders proclaimed an independent state in Damascus, but were swiftly defeated by the forces of Great Britain and France who soon after establishing control, re-arranged the Middle East to suit themselves.

Syria became a French protectorate as a League of Nations mandate. The Christian coastal areas were split off to become Lebanon, another French protectorate. Iraq and Palestine became British mandated territories. Iraq became the "Kingdom of Iraq" and one of Sharif Hussein's sons, Faisal, was installed as the King of Iraq. Iraq incorporated large populations of Kurds, Assyrians and Turkmens, many of whom had been promised independent states of their own.

Britain was granted a Mandate for Palestine on 25 April 1920 at the San Remo Conference, and, on 24 July 1922, this mandate was approved by the League of Nations. Palestine became the "British Mandate of Palestine" and was placed under direct British administration. The Jewish population of Palestine, consisting overwhelmingly of recent migrants from Europe, numbered less than 8 percent in 1918. Under the British mandate, Zionist settlers were granted wide rein to immigrate initially, buy land from absentee landlords, set up a local government and later establish the nucleus of a state all under the protection of the British Army, which brutally suppressed multiple Palestinian Arab revolts in the years that followed, including in 1936. The Territory East of the Jordan River and west of Iraq was also declared a British Mandate when the Council of the League of Nations passed the British written Transjordan Memorandum on 16 September 1922. Most of the Arabian peninsula, including the Holy cities of Mecca and Medina, though not incorporated into either a British or French colonial mandate, fell under the control of another British ally, Ibn Saud, who in 1932, founded the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

1920–1945

Saad Zaghloul

During the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s, Syria and Egypt made moves towards independence. In 1919, Egypt's Saad Zaghloul orchestrated mass demonstrations in Egypt known as the First Revolution. While Zaghloul would later become Prime Minister, the British repression of the anticolonial riots led to around 800 deaths. In 1920, Syrian forces were defeated by the French in the Battle of Maysalun and Iraqi forces were defeated by the British when they revolted. In 1922, the (nominally) independent Kingdom of Egypt was created following the British government's issuance of the Unilateral Declaration of Egyptian Independence.

Although the Kingdom of Egypt was technically "neutral" during World War II, Cairo soon became a major military base for the British and the country was occupied. The British cited the 1936 treaty that allowed it to station troops on Egyptian soil to protect the Suez Canal. In 1941, the Rashīd `Alī al-Gaylānī coup in Iraq led to the British to invade, leading to the Anglo-Iraqi War. This was followed by the Allied invasion of Syria–Lebanon and the Anglo-Soviet invasion of Iran.

In Palestine, conflicting forces of Arab nationalism and Zionism created a situation the British could neither resolve nor extricate themselves from. The rise of German dictator Adolf Hitler had created a new urgency in the Zionist quest to immigrate to Palestine and create a Jewish state. A Palestinian state was also an attractive alternative to the Arab and Persian leaders, instead of the de facto British, French, and perceived Jewish colonialism or imperialism, under the logic of "the enemy of my enemy is my friend".

New states after World War II

Farouk of Egypt

When World War II ended, the British, French, and Soviets, withdrew from most parts of the regions they had occupied both before and during the War II and seven Middle East states gained or regained independence:

• 22 November 1943 – Lebanon
• 1 January 1944 – Syria
• 22 May 1946 – Jordan (British mandate ended)
• 1947 – Iraq (forces of the United Kingdom withdrawn)
• 1947 – Egypt (forces of the United Kingdom withdrawn to the Suez Canal area until 1956)
• 1948 – Israel (forces of the United Kingdom withdrawn)
• August 16, 1960 – Cyprus

The struggle between the Arabs and the Jews in Palestine culminated in the 1947 United Nations plan to partition Palestine. This plan sought to create an Arab state and a separate Jewish state in the narrow space between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean. Jewish leaders accepted the plan, but Arab leaders rejected it.

On 14 May 1948, when the British Mandate expired, the Zionist leadership declared the State of Israel. In the 1948 Arab–Israeli War which immediately followed, the armies of Egypt, Syria, Transjordan, Lebanon, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia intervened and were defeated by Israel. About 800,000 Palestinians fled from areas annexed by Israel and became refugees in neighbouring countries, thus creating the "Palestinian problem", which has troubled the region ever since. Approximately two-thirds of 758,000–866,000 of the Jews expelled or who fled from Arab lands after 1948 were absorbed and naturalized by the State of Israel.

1960s

1963 film about contemporary events in the Middle East

The modern Middle East was shaped by three things: departure of European powers, the founding of Israel, and the growing importance of the oil industry. These developments eventually led to increased U.S. involvement in the region. The United States was the ultimate guarantor of the region's stability as well as the dominant force in the oil industry after the 1950s. When revolutions brought radical anti-Western regimes to power in Egypt (1954), Syria (1963), Iraq (1968), and Libya (1969), the Soviet Union, seeking to open a new arena of the Cold War, allied itself with Arab socialist rulers.

On August 16, 1960, Cyprus gained its independence from the British Empire. Archbishop Makarios III, a charismatic religious and political leader, was elected its first independent president, and in 1961 it became the 99th member of the United Nations. Between 1955 and 1974, conflict arising between Greek Cypriots and Turkish Cypriots led to Cypriot intercommunal violence and the Turkish invasion of Cyprus. The Cyprus dispute remains unresolved.

In the mid-to-late 1960s, the Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party led by Michel Aflaq and Salah al-Din al-Bitar took power in both Iraq and Syria. Iraq was first ruled by Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr, but was succeeded by Saddam Hussein in 1979. Syria was ruled first by a Military Committee led by Salah Jadid, and later Hafez al-Assad until 2000, when he was succeeded by his son, Bashar al-Assad.

Six-Day War

Tensions between Israel and its Arab neighbors rose in 1966 and 1967, as Palestinian armed groups and the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) attacked each other in bursts. In May 1967, Soviet intelligence released a report falsely claiming that Israel was going to start an offensive against Syria, which prompted Egyptian leader Gamal Abdel Nasser to mobilize his forces in solidarity with Syria and prepare for war. In the Six-Day War from 5 to 10 June 1967, Israel invaded and captured the Sinai Peninsula and Gaza Strip from Egypt; the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, from Jordan; and the Golan Heights from Syria. The war ended with Israel's continued control of the territories when all countries involved agreed to a ceasefire.

A map of Israeli and Egyptian territorial changes in the Six-Day War and Yom Kippur War

The Arab countries had 18,000 casualties in the war, while Israel had 700. In November 1967, UN Resolution 242 called for Israel to return the conquered territories in exchange for a lasting peace, which the country did not do. One million Palestinians now lived under Israeli occupation. With an overwhelming Israeli victory, many viewed the defeat as the failure of Arab socialism. Militant and fundamentalist Islam filled the "political vacuum" that was made.

War of Attrition

The Arab position, as it emerged in September 1967 at the Khartoum Summit, later become known as the "three nos": no peace, no recognition and no negotiation with Israel. In 1968, Nasser announced his plans to take back the Sinai Peninsula, receiving aid from the Soviets to make up for Egyptian losses in the war. The War of Attrition started with limited fighting. The war paused with a mutual ceasefire as both countries built up their forces. In 1969, a larger-scale war began, minorly involving Iraq, Jordan, Palestine, and Syria in an eastern front. In 1970, Nasser asked for direct military support from the Soviets, who began air strikes on Israelis in Egypt. This led to the U.S. mediating another ceasefire, ending the war with no territorial changes.

1970s

Yom Kippur War, the PLO, and the Camp David Accords

After the War of Attrition, new Egyptian president Anwar Sadat expressed willingness to reach an accord with Israel based on UNSC resolution 242, but Golda Meir rejected the proposal, leading to the Yom Kippur War. On 6 October 1973, Egypt and Syria invaded the Sinai Peninsula and Golan Heights to take them back. The U.S. sided with Israel, and the Soviet Union with Egypt and Syria. In 1974, the three warring states agreed to ceasefires and the construction of a UN buffer zone between Egypt and Syria. The Sinai Peninsula stayed under Israeli occupation.

In 1964, the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) was created as an umbrella organization for underground anti-Israel Palestinian rebels. They grew in the post-1967 occupation, and in 1969, Yasser Arafat was made their chairman. PLO's many factions have different ideologies, from wanting to destroy the state of Israel and replace it with a religiously-equal state, or negotiating with Israel for peace. In the 1970s, some PLO factions engaged in guerrilla warfare against Israel and elsewhere from the PLO's headquarters in Jordan, before Jordan forced them out in 1971. The PLO moved to Lebanon. In 1974, Arafat ordered the end of attacks outside of Israel, and Arab states recognized the PLO as the legitimate Palestinian governmental body.

U.S. president Jimmy Carter, Israeli prime minister Menachem Begin, and Egyptian president Anwar Sadat at the 1978 Camp David Accords

The 1978 Camp David Accords mediated by the U.S. led to the 1979 Egypt—Israel peace treaty, in which Israel agreed to stop occupying the Sinai Peninsula. Egypt unsuccessfully tried to get Israel to recognize a Palestinian state which governed Gaza and the West Bank; Israel still sought to destroy the PLO. The accords' "Framework for Peace in the Middle East" put off peace between Israel and Palestine for a later time.

Lebanese Civil War

The PLO's move to Lebanon, and Israel's wish to destroy the PLO, partially led to the Lebanese Civil War, which was fought from 1975 to 1990. Fighting was between the Lebanese Army; Israel; Syria; the PLO; the Lebanese Front, representing the country's traditional Christian elites; the Lebanese National Movement of leftists, Arab nationalists, and Sunnis; and the Amal Movement of Shi'ite populists. The war ultimately led to Israel and Syria occupying different parts of Lebanon until 2000 and 2005, respectively.

White Revolution and the Iranian revolution

From 1963 to 1979, the Shah reformed Iran in the White Revolution. A Western ally, he rapidly urbanized, secularized, and Westernized the country, while forgoing democracy and human rights. Women received more liberties, land was redistributed to families, literacy increased, tribal groups were given greater autonomy, and the economy boomed from oil. Contrarily, political opposition was marginalized and censored, and dissidents were surveilled, harassed, or tortured. Ulama Shia scholars were undermined by secular leaders, and the economic changes did not reach everyone equally.

Shi'ite protests against the Pahlavi dynasty during the Iranian revolution

Shi'ite leaders disliked secularization and women's rights—one leader was the populist and anti-Western Ruhollah Khomeini, who was exiled from Iran in 1964 by the Shah. However, he still had influence there, and called for the Shah's overthrow. During the 1979 Iranian revolution, the Pahlavi dynasty was overthrown. The Shah died from health issues in Egypt, and Khomeini became the country's leader. He made Iran a Shi'ite theocratic state, cut ties with the West, and rolled back women's rights. He stayed in power until 1989.

Shi'ite militants held 66 Americans hostage in the U.S. embassy in Tehran from November 1979 to January 1981. The hostage takers wanted the U.S. to extradite the Shah to Iran to be put on trial for human rights abuses. The U.S. did not comply, and stopped buying Iranian oil, which hurt the U.S. economy. The Shah's death did not end the crisis, and U.S. president Jimmy Carter lost the 1980 presidential election amidst an oil-related recession. In 1981, when Carter's successor Ronald Reagan took office, the hostages were freed.

1980s

Iran—Iraq War

Iranians resisting the Iraqi invasion during the First Battle of Khorramshahr in 1980

Saddam Hussein became the president of Iraq in July 1979. The Shi'ite revolution in Iran concerned Hussein, who thought that majority-Shi'ite Iraq would face a similar uprising. He also wanted to overturn the 1975 Algiers Agreement, which let Iran control the Shatt al-Arab waterway in exchange for Iran withdrawing support for an insurgency by northern Iraqi Kurds. The Shatt al-Arab had been Iraq's only way to access the Persian Gulf. Hussein had begun relying on Iraq's minority Sunni population when on 22 September 1980, Iraq invaded Iran, starting the Iran—Iraq War. Hussein considered this militarily viable because Iran's military was considered to be weakened after the revolution. Iraq first captured the oil-producing region of Khuzestan, but Iranians intensely resisted, and by early 1982, all the Iranian territory that Iraq had taken was reclaimed. Nevertheless, the war continued for another six years at great cost for both sides.

Assassination of Anwar Sadat

On 6 October 1981, the anniversary of the Yom Kippur War, Anwar Sadat was assassinated by a group of Islamic extremists while he was inspecting troops in Cairo. They disliked that Sadat negotiated with Israel and let the Shah die in Egypt instead of extraditing him to Iran. The perpetrators were led by Khaled el Islambouli, who had connections to the terrorist group Takfir Wal-Hajira. Takfir Wal-Hajira was partially funded by Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, who unsuccessfully attempted to assassinate Sadat in 1980. Sadat was succeeded by his vice president Hosni Mubarak, who put hundreds of people on trial for conspiracy in the assassination. In the following years, Mubarak continued following the terms of the Camp David Accords, and improved relations with other Arab states, Israel, and the U.S.

Israeli troops invading Lebanon in 1982

1982 Lebanon War

During the 1982 Lebanon War, Israel invaded Lebanon, seven years into the Lebanese Civil War. The invasion was ostensibly because of attacks launched on Israel by PLO members located in Southern Lebanon. Israel reached as far as west Beirut, where the PLO had its main stronghold, putting that part of the city under siege. 19,000 people died under the siege. Those PLO members made an agreement with Israel to leave Lebanon for Tunisia, while Israel occupied Southern Lebanon until 2000, supporting proxy wars there.

On 14 September 1982, Lebanese president-elect Bachir Gemayel was assassinated by a Syrian nationalist potentially under orders from Hafez al-Assad. Soon after, the Kataeb Party right-wing Lebanese militia, coordinating with the IDF, carried out the Sabra and Shatila massacre of 2,000 to 3,500 Lebanese and Palestinian civilians. Out of this conflict came Hezbollah, a Lebanese Shi'ite political party and militant organization opposed to Israel, the U.S., and Saudi Arabia, and supported by Iran. On 23 October 1983, a terrorist attack by the Islamic Jihad Organization on an American military barrack in Beirut killed 300 American and French soldiers.

Iran—Contra affair

In the 1980s, the U.S. supported the Contras—fighting the Marxist Nicaraguan government—financially and militarily, as Ronald Reagan feared Marxism spreading through Central America. Supporting the Contras was soon banned by the U.S. Congress. Meanwhile, Americans in Lebanon were being held captive by Shi'ites supporting Iran; the U.S. publicly denied negotiating with terrorists or aiding Iran during its war with Iraq, labeling Iran a terrorist state. Secretly, starting in 1985, Reagan sold Iran weapons in exchange for the hostages' release, diverting some sales revenue to the Contras. This was publicized in 1986, but Reagan was not punished for the illegal act.

First Intifada

A protest in Gaza during the First Intifada in 1987

In 1977, the right-wing political party Likud won the Israeli elections, leading to Israel expropriating more land and furthering settlements in the West Bank. Palestinian protests following the invasion of Lebanon increased Israel's repression in Gaza and the West Bank. The conditions for a Palestinian uprising were greater as certain Palestinians challenged the PLO's leadership and viewed Israel, which in the mid-1980s had a significant number vying for peace, as more receptive to Palestinian protests.

In December 1987, an Israeli caused a vehicle crash that killed four Palestinians, as revenge for the fatal stabbing of an Israeli in Gaza years prior. The crash led to the First Intifada, a Palestinian uprising, involving the PLO, against Israel. It started as protests and turned into a military conflict against the occupiers. 2,000 people died, around three quarters being Palestinian deaths. In 1988, the PLO denied the U.S.' deal of making peace with Israel on the condition that the PLO acknowledge "Israel’s right 'to live in peace within secure and recognized boundaries'". The Intifada politically and economically hurt Israel, who elected politicians favoring peace in the 1992 elections.

1990s

The fall of the Soviet Union and the collapse of communism in the early 1990s had several consequences for the Middle East. It allowed large numbers of Soviet Jews to emigrate from Russia and Ukraine to Israel, further strengthening the Jewish state. It cut off the easiest source of credit, armaments, and diplomatic support to the anti-western Arab regimes, weakening their position. It opened up the prospect of cheap oil from Russia, driving down the price of oil and reducing the west's dependence on oil from the Arab states. It discredited the model of development through authoritarian state socialism, which Egypt (under Nasser), Algeria, Syria, and Iraq had followed since the 1960s, leaving these regimes politically and economically stranded. Rulers such as Iraq's Saddam Hussein increasingly relied on Arab nationalism as a substitute for socialism.

In most Middle Eastern countries, the growth of market economies was said to be limited by political restrictions, corruption, and cronyism, overspending on arms and prestige projects and over-dependence on oil revenues. The successful economies were countries that had oil wealth and low populations, such as Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), where the ruling emirs allowed some political and social liberalization, but without giving up any of their own power.

The two halves of Yemen which unified in 1990. The gray area, controlled by Saudi Arabia, was ceded to Yemen in 2000.

Yemeni unification and 1994 civil war

In 1990, North and South Yemen unified as the Republic of Yemen, whose constitution outlines a liberal parliamentary democracy led by a popularly elected president and a bicameral legislature, one house being popularly elected and the other elected by the president. The first president of the republic was Ali Abdullah Saleh. In the following years, southern Yemenis felt they had a lesser status than the northerners, and tried to split off from the north. Saleh disallowed this, starting the Yemeni civil war of 1994. He ultimately maintained the union. In the 2000 Treaty of Jeddah, Saudi Arabia ceded land to northern Yemen.

Gulf War, 1991 Iraqi uprisings, and the 1998 bombing of Iraq

On 2 August 1990, Iraq—with the world's fifth-largest army—invaded Kuwait in retaliation for oil-related economic disputes between the two countries. The Kuwaitis strongly resisted Iraq, but within days, the capital of Kuwait City was captured. Kuwaiti emir Jaber Al-Ahmad Al-Sabah fled to Saudi Arabia and established a government-in-exile, to which 350,000 Kuwaitis fled. Iraq was supported by Algeria, Jordan, the Palestinian Liberation Organization, Sudan, Tunisia, and Yemen, while Kuwait was supported by Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Syria, and other Gulf states. As Iraqi troops neared Saudi Arabia, Saudi King Fahd asked his allies to respond militarily, which the Soviets supported.

On 7 August, the U.S. launched Operation Desert Shield, deploying more than 400,000 troops and backed by an international coalition. Iraq stopped plans to invade Saudi Arabia. On 8 August, Iraq established the Republic of Kuwait occupation government led by Colonel Alaa Hussain Ali. The occupiers "began a systematic campaign of pillage, rape, torture, murder, and theft".

In Operation Desert Storm (movements pictured), an international coalition launched an invasion of Iraq and Iraq-occupied Kuwait

On 15 August 1990, Hussein used the Kuwaiti crisis to end the Iran—Iraq War, as Iraq accepted Iranian terms and stopped occupying parts of Iran. On 17 January 1991, the coalition's Operation Desert Storm started, led by U.S. General Norman Schwarzkopf. It involved air, ground, and naval offenses. Iraq, outnumbered and using ineffective weaponry, was quickly defeated. Iraqi casualties vastly outnumbered the coalition's. Iraq was forced into making peace and recognizing the re-established Kuwaiti emirate's soveriegnty.

In the war's aftermath, Kurds in northern Iraq started a rebellion against Hussein's government, which was brutally suppressed. This caused the coalition countries to establish a no-fly zone over parts of Iraq. As part of the war's peace terms, Iraq had to cooperate with UN investigators who would search the country for the presence of weapons of mass destruction (WMDs). Iraq refused to cooperate with the UN, leading to the 1998 bombing of Iraq by the U.S. and U.K.

Oslo Accords

The 1993 and 1995 Oslo Accords between Israel and the PLO were initially a significant step towards peace between Israel and Palestine. The accords advocated a two-state solution, and in a slight weakening of Israel's post-1967 occupation of Palestine, Gaza and the West Bank were allowed limited self-governance by the Palestinian Authority. The agreement had the goal of ending the Israel—Palestine conflict by May 1999, but this did not happen. On 4 November 1995, Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated by a Jewish extremist who was against the accords. This brought up concerns about Israel's national security, which led to the 1996 election of Benjamin Netanyahu, who was against the accords, as prime minister. Netanyahu refused to negotiate with Yasser Arafat. While Netanyahu's successor Ehud Barak resumed negotiations, tensions between Israel and Palestine had once again started to rise.

21st century

2000s

Second Intifada

A 2003 map of the Middle East

The 2000 Camp David Summit, meant to further peace between Israel and Palestine, failed. Also that year, Israeli politician Ariel Sharon, leader of Likud, visited the Temple Mount—a holy site for both Jews and Muslims in the Old City of Jerusalem—to promote Israeli sovereignty over the site. Sharon's visit and rioting by Israeli Arabs led to the Second Intifada, an uprising by Palestinians against Israeli security forces in Palestine which lasted until 2005. The Intifada and the failure of the Camp David summit, Britannica writes, "convinced a majority of Israelis that they lacked a partner in [Yasser] Arafat to end the [Israel-Palestine] conflict".

In June 2002, at the height of the uprising, Israel built a barrier between and Israel and the West Bank, and inside of the West Bank, which Israeli security forces still continued to patrol. 10% of the West Bank's territory effectively became under the control of Israel through the barrier's construction. In 2003, Sharon, then the prime minister of Israel, announced Israeli security forces would withdraw from Gaza and parts of the West Bank. Arafat died in 2004, leading to negotiations between Israel and a more moderate Palestinian government, which led to an agreement for a ceasefire in 2005. In September 2005, Israel withdrew its military and settlers from the Gaza Strip, but still patrolled the territory's borders and airspace.

al-Qaeda and the Iraq War

Many of the Afghan mujahideen who fought against the Soviets in the Soviet-Afghan War of the 1980s were funded by the U.S. under the CIA's Operation Cyclone. One of these militants was Osama bin Laden, an Islamist, pan-Islamist, and jihadist of the wealthy bin Laden family which had connections to the Saudi royal family. In 1988, Bin Laden founded al-Qaeda, a militant terrorist organization. In 1996 and 1998, he issued two fatāwā, declaring war on the U.S. in response to their foreign policy in the Middle East such as their permanent military presence in countries like Saudi Arabia.

On 11 September 2001 (9/11), al-Qaeda launched a series of major terrorist attacks on various targets in the U.S., killing almost 3000 people. U.S. president George W. Bush launched a "war on terror" against terrorist organizations worldwide, including al-Qaeda and their supporters. In October 2001, the U.S. invaded Afghanistan to find Osama bin Laden and dissolve the Taliban government which had been harboring al-Qaeda in the country. Bush soon proclaimed that Iraq, Iran, and North Korea constituted an "axis of evil" which supported anti-American terrorism. His administration worked to falsely tie Iraq to 9/11, and claim Iraq too was harboring al-Qaeda. This was while the U.S. maintained relations with Saudi Arabia, who have been more credibly accused of working with the perpetrators.

The statue of Saddam Hussein in Baghdad's Firdos Square being taken down during the 2003 invasion of Iraq

In 2002, U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld developed a plan to invade Iraq, remove Hussein from power, and turn Iraq into a democratic state with a free-market economy, which they hoped would serve as a model for the rest of the Middle East. The Bush administration falsely claimed that Iraq was developing and hiding WMDs which could be used to harm the U.S. or other western democracies. British Prime Minister Tony Blair sided with the U.S. On 20 March 2003, a U.S.-led international coalition invaded Iraq, toppling Hussein's government in April. Hussein was captured in December 2003, put on trial for crimes against humanity in 2005, and was found guilty before being executed on 30 December 2006.

When Hussein's government collapsed, Iraq's major cities were subject to widespread looting, and the occupation soldiers came under attack by a new Iraqi insurgency. The insurgency was driven by Al-Qaeda, now present in Iraq, under the leadership of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. The return of formerly-persecuted Shi'a Muslims to the country created a civil war with the Sunnis, who had just lost significant power with the dissolution of the ruling Ba'ath Party and were radicalized by al-Zarqawi.

U.S. troop deaths rose, while they tried to recreate Iraq as a democratic country with free elections. In the U.S. in 2004, it was publicized that U.S. soldiers working at the Iraqi Abu Ghraib prison—which held Iraqi prisoners of war—had engaged in widespread torture and abuse of the inmates; these soldiers were prosecuted by the military, but it still had a negative effect on the war's popularity. In 2006, al-Zarqawi was killed in a U.S. bombing. In 2007, amidst greater numbers of U.S. deaths in a "grave and deteriorating" war, Bush started a surge of American troops in Iraq; it is debatable if successive U.S. gains in Iraq were due to the troop surge or other concurrent factors.

Further conflict involving Israel, Gaza, and Lebanon

During the 2006 Lebanon War, a soldier of the Israeli Defense Forces tosses a grenade into a bunker occupied by Hezbollah militants

Starting in 2000, Israel and Hezbollah, a Lebanese political party and militant organization, engaged in skirmishes over land disputes and the detention of Lebanese nationals by Israel. On 12 July 2006, Hezbollah fired a series of rockets into northern Israel and had ground troops cross the border into Israel, where eight Israeli soldiers were killed and two were kidnapped. This began the 2006 Lebanon War, which lasted for 34 days until 14 August, when Israel, Lebanon, and Hezbollah agreed to follow UN Resolution 1701.

The Palestinian militant organization Hamas won the 2006 Palestinian legislative election. Israel recognized the West Bank's administration as being led by the moderate Fatah, who came in second in the election. Hamas, who only succeeded in governing the Gaza Strip, was declared a hostile group. Israel started a blockade around the Gaza Strip, closing border crossings and limiting imports into the strip. Hamas attacked Israel multiple times, before they made a six-month ceasefire agreement that lasted from June to December 2008. Once the agreement was over, the military conflict restarted with greater intensity, starting the Gaza War of 2008 to 2009. The war ended with another ceasefire agreement, but the blockade by Israel as well as Egypt has continued until the present day.

2010s

The Burj Khalifa, the world's tallest building, was completed in Dubai, UAE in 2010

In the first decades of the 21st century, the Emirati city of Dubai underwent rapid development in previously barren desert land. This included the 2010 opening of the Burj Khalifa, the world's tallest building at 2,717 feet. In 2016, Forbes wrote that Dubai could be "the most important city" of the century, noting that its growth increased the population of the UAE by around 1.3 million in the previous decade.

Arab Spring

In the early 2010s, the Arab Spring revolutionary wave created major protests and uprisings to several Middle Eastern and Arab-majority countries' governments. It started in December 2010 with the Tunisian revolution, which forced the resignation of the country's president Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali. In January 2011, the Egyptian Revolution started which forced the resignation of Hosni Mubarak in February. In Bahrain, protests against the government in February and March 2011 were violently suppressed by the government. In March 2011, protests in Syria against Bashar al-Assad were violently suppressed, leading to the Syrian civil war that year. In Yemen, protests forced the resignation of Ali Abdullah Saleh, who was succeeded by Abdrabbuh Mansur Hadi in November 2011; Hadi's government was similar unstable, which led to the Yemeni civil war which started in 2014.

Yemeni conflicts from 2003 to present

In 2003, the Iran-backed Yemeni Houthi movement began an insurgency against Saleh's government—which persecuted Zaydi Shi'ites—as well as Saudi Arabia. In 2009, al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula formed in Yemen, causing Saudi Arabia to secure their border with Yemen. The Yemeni civil war, ongoing since 2014, has been fought between the Republic of Yemen government; the Houthis and their Supreme Political Council government; al-Qaeda; and each faction's allies. In September 2014, the Houthis took over the Yemeni capital of Sanaa, and Abdrabbuh Mansur Hadi was put under house arrest. He escaped to Saudi Arabia in 2015. Saudi Arabia and the UAE fought alongside the Republic of Yemen, but the Houthis maintained their holdings. The Houthis captured the city of Aden in 2018, influencing the UAE to withdraw from Yemen.

Syrian civil war and the War against the Islamic State

2012 was successful for Syrian rebel groups opposing al-Assad, establishing a foothold in Aleppo. The Battle of Aleppo became a stalemate in early 2013. The civil war soon became a proxy war, as al-Assad received support from Hezbollah, Iran, and Russia, while rebel groups—starting to have their own infighting—received support from Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and the U.S. On 21 August 2013, hundreds of civilians in Damascus were killed in a chemical attack by the al-Assad regime. This caused debate in the U.S., U.K., and France over whether or not they should militarily intervene in Syria. This was opposed by China, Iran, and Russia. In September, Syria, the U.S., and Russia made an agreement that al-Assad would rid Syria of chemical weapons, which was successfully carried out. Meanwhile, the Al-Nusra Front, an Islamist al-Qaeda affiliate, had military success in Syria.

A map of Syria and Iraq in June 2015, showing territories controlled by, among others, Ba'athist Syria (pink), the Islamic State at their greatest extent (gray), Kurdish forces (yellow), and the Republic of Iraq (purple)

In 2013, a Sunni insurgent terrorist group, the Islamic State (IS), started an offensive that took large amounts of territory in Iraq and Syria, fighting both the Iraqi government and, in Syria, al-Assad and his opposing rebels. In June 2014, IS proclaimed themselves a caliphate led by Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. They launched many terrorist attacks worldwide. IS' growth overshadowed the successes of the Al-Nusra Front. In 2016, the Al-Nusra Front cut ties with al-Qaeda and soon dissolved, succeeded by the group Tahrir al-Sham in 2017.

There was an international military campaign against IS in Iraq and Syria from 2013 to 2017, which fed into the Syrian civil war. The U.S. and a coalition of Arab countries bombed IS; Russia bombed IS and unrelated Syrian rebel groups, falsely claiming they [Russia] were mostly targeting IS. The U.S. allied with Kurdish-aligned forces such as the Syrian Democratic Forces. Turkey and the Kurds continued their decades-long war with each other, while both were allied with the U.S. and fighting IS. Turkey backed Syrian rebels along the Syria—Turkey border, and the Turkish military directly occupied part of northern Syria in August 2016 to fight IS and the Kurds. IS was thus fighting three simultaneous fronts: al-Assad, Kurds, and Turkey, as well as each of their allies.

Outnumbered, IS lost control of three major cities: Aleppo in 2016, and Raqqa and Deir al-Zour in 2017. The group was "effectively defeated" by November 2017, though they held on to small amounts of territory until 2019. In 2018, Israel targeted Iranian soldiers stationed in Syria. Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi died in Syria on 26 or 27 October 2019, when he committed suicide amidst an attack on him by U.S. forces. While the original IS organization declined, a branch of IS based in south-central Asia named Islamic State — Khorasan Province became more powerful in the 2020s.

2014 Gaza War

In 2014, Hamas militants kidnapped and murdered three Israeli teenagers, and two Israelis retaliated by murdering a Palestinian teenager. Large demonstrations by both sides led to exchanges of rocket fire by both sides. On 7 August, Israel launched a ground invasion of the Gaza Strip to destroy Hamas' underground tunnel network that was used to store their missiles. Israel successfully destroyed them, limiting Hamas' ability to greatly attack Israel for around a decade. On 26 August, Israel and Hamas agreed to a ceasefire.

2020s

On 4 August 2020, the city of Beirut was greatly damaged when a stockade of ammonium nitrate that had been negligently left in the city's port for years exploded, creating a shockwave. At least 200 people were killed, 6,000 injured, and 300,000 made homeless. The explosion worsened an national economic crisis that had already been accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Israeli conflict with Hamas, Hezbollah, Houthis, and Iran

Various pictures of the 7 October 2023 attack on Israel by Hamas: a satellite photo of fires throughout Israel, destroyed buildings, and civilians being attacked

In 2022, Benjamin Netanyahu returned as Israeli prime minister, cementing what CNN referred to as "Israel’s likely most right-wing government ever". On 7 October 2023, Hamas launched a large-scale surprise attack on Israel, killing around 1,200 people, the majority Israeli civilians. Hundreds were taken hostage by Hamas. It was the deadliest day in the history of Israel, who declared war on Hamas. Hezbollah began rocket attacks on Israel, and Israel responded with air strikes. Israeli also conducted air strikes on Gaza, followed by a full land invasion. By November 2024, 43,000 Gazan civilians and militants have been killed in the war and most of the strip has been destroyed.

Aftermath of Israeli bombing of Gaza City in December 2023, during the Israel–Hamas war

There were multiple peace talks between Israel and Hamas—involving the U.S.—but most of these failed. The U.S. minorly held back Israel's plans for Gaza, while at the same time supplying Israel with weapons. Israel was accused by multiple countries and international organizations of committing a genocide of Palestinians. Iran formed an anti-Israel "axis of resistance" with Hamas, Hezbollah, Syria, and Yemeni Houthis. The Houthis attacked shipping in the Red Sea, leading to a U.S.-led military response.

In September 2024, Israeli intelligence launched a widespread attack in Lebanon, by flooding the country with electronic devices such as pagers which had been rigged to explode. The devices were intended to be sold to Hezbollah members, though some civilians were killed. On 1 October, Israel invaded Lebanon, escalating their conflict with Hezbollah. Iran launched air strikes on Israel in response, and Israel did the same back to Iran.

End to the PKK conflict and Ba'athist Syria

In late 2024, Turkey began to end their conflict with Kurds in Syria in response to the region's destabilization. On 7 December, a coalition of Syrian opposition armies captured Damascus, forcing Bashar al-Assad to flee the country—likely to Russia—ending Ba'athist Syria. Since 2022, al-Assad had received less support from Russia, who were "bogged down" in the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Abu Mohammed al-Golani, head of Tahrir al-Sham, now stands to lead the development of a new Syrian national government.

See also

• Timeline of Middle Eastern history
• Genetic history of the Middle East
• List of modern conflicts in the Middle East

By country:

• History of Bahrain
• History of Cyprus
• History of Egypt
• History of Iran
• History of Iraq
• History of Israel
• History of Jordan
• History of Kuwait
• History of Lebanon
• History of Oman
• History of Palestine
• History of Qatar
• History of Saudi Arabia
• History of Syria
• History of Turkey
• History of the United Arab Emirates
• History of Yemen

References

Works cited

• Esposito, John L. (1999), The Oxford History of Islam (Illustrated ed.), New York City: Oxford University Press, ISBN 978-0-19-510799-9
• Guzman, Gregory (1985), "Christian Europe and Mongol Asia: First Medieval Intercultural Contact Between East and West" (PDF), Essays in Medieval Studies, 2
• Hourani, Albert (2013), A History of the Arab Peoples (Updated ed.), Faber and Faber, ISBN 978-0-571-30249-9
• Stearns, Peter N. (2007), A Brief History of the World, The Teaching Company
• Stearns, Peter N.; Adas, Michael; Schwartz, Stuart B.; Gilbert, Marc Jason (2011), World Civilizations: The Global Experience (6th ed.), Upper Saddle River, NJ: Longman, ISBN 978-0-13-136020-4
• Wawro, Geoffrey (2008), Historical Atlas: A Comprehensive History of the World, Elanora Heights, NSW, Australia: Millennium House, ISBN 978-1-921209-23-9

Further reading

• Cheta, Omar Youssef. "The economy by other means: The historiography of capitalism in the modern Middle East." History Compass (April 2018) 16#4 DOI: 10.1111/hic3.12444
• Cleveland, William L. and Martin Bunton. (2016) A History of the Modern Middle East. 6th ed. Westview Press.
• Fawaz, Leila Tarazi. A Land of Aching Hearts: The Middle East in the Great War (2014)
• Fawcett, Louise, ed. International relations of the Middle East (Oxford University Press, 2013)
• Gause III, F. Gregory. "'Hegemony' Compared: Great Britain and the United States in the Middle East." Security Studies 28.3 (2019): 565-587. https://doi.org/10.1080/09636412.2019.1604987
• Goldschmidt, Arthur, and Lawrence Davidson. A concise history of the Middle East (Westview Press, 1991)
• Issawi, Charles. An economic history of the Middle East and North Africa (Routledge, 2013) Excerpt and text search
• Issawi, Charles, ed. The Economic History of the Middle East 1800–1914: A Book of Readings (1966) online
• Kirk, George Eden. A short history of the Middle East: from the rise of Islam to modern times(Methuen, 1964) online
• Lewis, Bernard (1995), The Middle East: A Brief History of the Last 2,000 Years, New York: Scribner
• Monroe, Elizabeth. Britain's Moment in the Middle East, 1914–1956 (1963) online Archived 2018-09-21 at the Wayback Machine
• Mansfield, Peter; Pelham, Nicolas (2013), A History of the Middle East (4 ed.), Penguin Books, ISBN 978-0-7181-9967-8
• Rogan, Eugene (2009), The Arabs: A History
• Quataert, Donald (2000), The Ottoman Empire, 1700–1922, Cambridge University Press, ISBN 978-1-139-44591-7
• Vasiliev, Alexey. Russia's Middle East Policy: From Lenin to Putin (Routledge, 2018).

• Worth, Robert F., "Syria's Lost Chance" (review of Elizabeth F. Thompson, How the West Stole Democracy from the Arabs: the Syrian Arab Congress of 1920 and the Destruction of Its Historic Liberal-Islamic Alliance, Atlantic Monthly, 466 pp.), The New York Review of Books, vol. LXVII, no. 15 (8 October 2020), pp. 31–33. Worth writes (p. 33): "Perhaps things would have been different if the Syrians had been left to govern themselves a century ago."

External links

• Articles From Our Experts – Qatar Digital Library – an online portal providing access to previously undigitised British Library archive materials relating to Persian Gulf history and Arabic science
• The Middle East : peace and the changing order from the Dean Peter Krogh Foreign Affairs Digital Archives
• Ancient Civilizations Medicine
• Assyrians
• Middle East: Primary Cultural and Historical Zones