ABSTRACT
After many years of debate, acrid at times, and although the area itself has risen to a position of major world significance, the term ‘Middle East’ still cannot command universal acceptance in a single strict sense – even counting in ‘Mideast’ as a mere abridgement. Perhaps the most that a geographer can say, taking refuge in semantics, is that it can be regarded as a ‘conventional’ regional term of general convenience, like Central Europe or the American Middle West, with many definitions in more detail feasible and logically possible. 1
