ABSTRACT
The “Middle East” is an enormous and diverse region of the world linked together by historical, cultural, linguistic, and religious connections, including legacies of the empires of Greece, Rome, the Arabs, the Ottoman Turks, and European and American imperialism. The region can be defined in a number of ways. For the purpose of this book I will use the definition that includes North Africa (Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, Sudan, Eretria, Somalia), the traditional “Middle East” (Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Oman, Israel, Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, Turkey, Jordan, Iraq, Iran, Kuwait, Arab Emirates, Qatar, Bahrain) and, especially because of the contemporary conflict there, Afghanistan. Even though this definition is certainly broad enough for this project, it could be even broader as many other countries might also be considered part of the “Middle East” (including Western Sahara, Mauritania, Ethiopia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, and Uzbekistan, even Pakistan). The region we will consider the “Middle East” has a current population of about 540 million people (the United States has 307 million) and an area of nearly 8 million square miles (the United States comprises 3.8 million square miles). The Arabian Peninsula by itself is about the same size as the United States east of the Mississippi plus Texas and California. The enormous region of the Middle East represents a great diversity of land forms at the intersection of three continents, including mountain ranges, seas, oceans, rivers fed by winter snowfall, fertile soils as well as deserts, Mediterranean and temperate climates.
