ABSTRACT
The early and medieval greatness of the Middle Eastern region was obliterated by the conquests and catastrophes which it underwent in the later Middle Ages. The traditional society of the Middle East was conditioned by its peculiar and diverse geography, climate and resources, and notably by the great varieties in its land-surface. These created the environments in which life could be lived — by agriculture, gardening, nomadic or static pastoralism, fishing, and urban and village occupations — and determined the local density of population, from empty desert to packed city, from the menacing over-population of Egypt and Lebanon, to the man-power shortages of Iraq, Persia and Syria. Middle Eastern towns of whatever magnitude owe their siting variously to the presence of an assured water-supply, to convenience as a caravan-staging-post in earlier days, to location at a point where some local resource could best be handled, to natural facilities for defence, or to some special sanctity which attracted pilgrims and a resulting livelihood.
