History of the Middle East

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.

[12] Neolithic agriculturalists, who may have resided in Northeast Africa and the Middle 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 zakat); and the hajj, the pilgrimage that a Muslim needed to take at least once in their lifetime.

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.

In November, in the Council of Clermont in France, Pope Urban II called for soldiers from across Europe to go east to take back the "Holy Land" for Christianity.

Bernard of Clairvaux, an influential French saint who had advocated for the war, determined that its failure lied in the "sinfulness of Europeans", and only through the "purification and prayers of Christian[s]" would God allow crusading knights to succeed; this became a core tenant of popular piety in medieval Europe.

From 1174 to 1186, in an act of jihad, a type of Islamic religious struggle,[38] Saladin conquered and united the Muslims of Syria, Egypt, Mesopotamia, and Palestine under the Ayyubid banner.

In 1187, at the Battle of Hattin, Saladin trapped and destroyed a Crusader army, giving the Ayyubids the opportunity to overrun the Kingdom of Jersualem and take back its capital.

At the time, the English, French, German, and Spanish monarchs were dealing with their own domestic affairs; Richard I of England vowed to return to the Middle East to finish the job of taking Jerusalem, but he died in 1199.

Over 12 years, the Mongols spread out from the eastern Eurasian Steppe into west and east Asia, brutally conquering much of the continent's land with a large army of effective cavalry and archers.

[69][71] 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.

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.

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.

[73] 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.

[76] 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.

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.

[91][102][86] In the 1953 Iranian coup d'état, the U.S.' Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the U.K. funded agents in Iran who were "used to foment unrest" against Mosaddegh through "harassment of religious and political leaders and a media disinformation campaign".

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.

In the Six-Day War in 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.

It discredited the model of development through authoritarian state socialism, which Egypt, Algeria, Syria, and Iraq had followed since the 1960s, leaving these regimes politically and economically stranded.

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 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 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".

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.