introduction

Geography, history and the people

Ours is the world and all who dwell upon it, and when we assault, we assault with power. When kings deal with their peoples unjustly we refuse to allow injustice among us. We are called oppressors; we never oppressed yet, but shortly we shall be starting oppression! When any body of ours reaches his weaning, the tyrants fall down before him prostrating. We have filled the land till it's too strait for us and we are filling the seas back with our vessels. So let no man act foolishly against us, or we shall exceed the folly of the foolhardiest.

Amr ibnel Kulthum — pre-Islamic poet of the sixth century

The greatest single unifying factor in the Middle East is the climate which, throughout the millennia, has imposed a special way of life and has been the mainspring of all social, economic and cultural diversifications. Within the Middle East are the great rivers Nile, Tigris, Euphrates, Arax and Kura. The Nile is fed by the Blue Nile (rising in the Ethiopian Highlands) and the White Nile (rising in the Central African Highlands). The waters of the rivers Tigris and Euphrates mingle some sixty miles before reaching the Persian Gulf. Their junction creates the Shatt-al-Arab waterway which forms the boundary between Iraq and Iran and has been a bone of contention over the centuries. Both rivers rise in the Armenian Highlands and zig-zag their way to the desert lands of Syria and Iraq. The Tigris (the Arrow), so named because of the swiftness of its waters, also receives several tributaries from the Zagros mountains of Iran. The plain here is threaded by numerous tributaries fed from one river to the other creating naturally formed irrigation schemes.

The Arax and Kura rivers rise in the Caucasian Highlands and flow into the Caspian Sea. The Arax borders the Armenian SSR and Turkey, whilst the Kura passes through the Georgian and Azerbaijanian SSR. The waters of the Arax irrigate the rich Ararat plateau.

Other important rivers are the Kizel Irmak (Turkey), Sefid and Kashka (Iran) and the Karun which waters south west Iran. Whilst the smaller rivers Orontes, Litani and the Jordan irrigate Syria, Lebanon, Israel and Trans-Jordan.

With the exception of the Caspian Littoral of Iran and Azerbaijan, 'Pontic' Turkey, and the Caucasian coastline of the Black Sea, rainfall is not only inadequate, but limited to spring and winter. The entire Mediterranean, therefore, stretching from Libya and Egypt, up the Levant to Turkey receives rainfall similar to California and south western Australia.

In the summer, drought is the general rule. Ninety per cent of the entire region is arid desert or semi-desert and whatever forests it once contained have long since vanished. Only five to six per cent of the Middle East is cultivated today and one-fifth of that needs water desperately.

Water is the most important human factor throughout the region. It has been deified throughout the ages and myths have been created around it. To preserve this scant and precious commodity the Ancient Sumerians, Assyrians, Babylonians, Hittites, Urartians and Romans built cisterns and viaducts, the remains of which can still be traced throughout Iraq, Syria and Turkey.

The Persians built qanats — underground conduits — to bring water for hundreds of miles from the mountains to the plains. In parts of Arabia water is so scarce that, rather than waste it, Bedouin women wash their hair in camel urine. The pious Muslim substitutes sand for water as he ritually 'cleanses' himself during prayer time. In ancient Armenia and Iran there existed (and still does) the Water Festival of 'Vartavar'— Burning of Roses. On this day people drench each other with water and the ecclesiastical procession throws rosewater at the congregation. The aim is to invoke the Gods for rain.

Today extensive work is being done to 'green' the land. Huge irrigation schemes such as the building of the Aswan Dam in Egypt, the Euphrates Dam in Syria and Ataturk Dam in Turkey have been established and already the effects of intensive agricultural techniques are seen in a number of highly productive farming areas such as western Lebanon, the Aleppo region of Syria, the Ararat valley in Armenia, the oasis of Damascus and, perhaps the most spectacular of all, the Jewish settlements of Israel, particularly in the Negev.

The position that the Middle East occupies in history is unique for it was here that man first began to cultivate food-plants and to domesticate wild animals. Wheat was cultivated in Jarmo (Kurdistan) 9000 years ago. Gradually peas, lentils and other crops were added to the 'original cuisine' of the inhabitants. With the full adoption of crop and stock raising man gave up nomadism and settlements grew into villages and then towns. As the population increased in the mountain regions people moved down to the plateaux and plains of the Tigris and Euphrates. There they were confronted with hot, semi-arid earth which they had to irrigate with the abundant waters of the two great rivers. The same process undoubtedly occurred around the Nile delta and further afield in the Ganges Basin of India. Towns produced social order, city states, nations and empires with which came literature, law and order.

By about 5000 BC the Egyptians were making wine and bread, rearing animals and cultivating crops. The produce grown at this time was extensive: wheat, barley, spelt, millet, legumes, root crops, melons, olives, grapes, figs and dates and, at a slightly later date, apples, peaches, pomegranates and apricots.

Around 3000 BC the Sumerians built their irrigation canals and city states and evolved a society divided into technological–social classes — nobility, priests, traders, farmers and artisans — divisions that still hold good for most Middle Eastern people today. The Sumerians, a non-Semitic people, were soon joined in Mesopotamia by Semitic tribes coming from Arabia and, in time, a new, mixed people were formed. Further north along the middle of the Euphrates several Semitic races intermingled and created city states. In 2350 BC the entire region was united under the leadership of Sargon, and his empire, in time, was replaced by that of the Amorites (1688 BC) whose most distinguished member was Hammurabi the law giver. The Amorites fell under the rising power of the Indo-European Hittites and Hurrians from the north — the ancestors of the Armenians and most modern Turks. By 1350 BC the Hittites had occupied Syria and wrested Palestine from Egypt and had become the mightiest power in western Asia.

Meanwhile, Egypt had developed its dynastic and political institutions and created one of the seven wonders of the ancient world — the...