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NASA/JPL/NIMA. “WorldSRTM-noPoles-giant” Online Image. Earth Observatory. 16 May 2005
<http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Newsroom/NewImages/Images/PIA03395_lrg.jpg>
Asia: The Middle East
This image was created from a larger Public Domain world map produced from data obtained by NASA's
Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM). The world map was cropped to the Middle East
and resized to 600 pixels wide using a trial version of Adobe Photoshop. Using Google's free Picasa2 program,
the color and lighting were then enhanced and finally sharpened to obtain the image above. The original
image can be viewed at the NASA link above.
The Middle East stands at the crossroads of three continents. The Silk Road which runs all the way across
Eurasia transects this region making it one of the most valuable and fought over pieces of
territory throughout world history. History began here around 4000 BC with the rise of the first
city state, Uruk in Sumeria. City state empires would dominate the region from Ur, to Babylon,
Ashur to Nineveh. In 539BC, Cyrus the Great conquered the region. For the first time, the Middle
East was consolidated in his Median Empire (soon to become the Persian Empire), and begin to look
outwards for conquest. The Persians (Median vassals who conquered and inherited Cyrus’s state),
began a centuries long struggle with the Greeks, led by the Athenians who formed the world’s first
democracy in 507BC. In the first defining cultural rivalry in world history, the Greeks fought off
Persian aggression and diplomacy on their home soil for 200 years. Finally, Alexander the Great
would unify Greece, by force, and conquer the Persian Empire in 328 BC spreading Greek art, thought,
and institutions as far as India.
Greek culture dominated the Middle East until the native Parthian
dynasty destroyed the last major Greek state in 141BC. The Parthians, and their successors the
Sassanian dynasty, inaugurated a long period of wars with the Romans, with Roman generally
controlling the Mediterranean coast and Anatolia, and the Parthians controlling Mesopotamia.
In 627AD the Arabian Muslim tribes conquered the Sassanian Empire, permanently transforming
the Middle East. The Arabs reaped the benefits of their rapid expansion, which brought massive
resources under their control, and their relatively gentle conquest and tolerance, which brought
them relatively contented conquests which a rich cultural heritages that they encouraged and
developed. By 732AD, the Arabs were at war in Central Asia and France, held relatively peaceful sway
over the lands in between, and were lords of the largest empire ever built. (And aside from the Tang
dynasty in China, the most learned and artistic.) Barbarian invasions ultimately destroyed the region
however. From 1037-1071, the Turks swept through the Middle East conquering from Iran to Anatolia.
They were not gentle conquerors and permanently crippled the region’s previous emphasis on learning
and toleration, the ruled firmly keeping the subject populations under the feet of their lethal armies
of mounted cavalry. The Turks lack of political cohesion allowed the European Crusaders to make undreamt
of gains in the Middle East and hold them for centuries. Finally the Mongol onslaught devastated the
culture and cities of the Middle East. When the Mameluke Sultanate of Egypt finally turned back the
Mongol tide in 1260, learning was a distant memory, and Islamic fundamentalism had been born.
When the last of the Mongol warlords, Timur the Lame, died in 1405, the Ottoman Sultanate was refounded
in Anatolia, and by 1492, controlled Anatolia, the Balkans, and the almost entire Black Sea coast.
By 1520, they had conquered Egypt and Syria and began their see-saw contest with the Safavid Persians
over Mesopotamia. This cut Europe off from the Silk Road which drove the most important expansion
in world history, the colonial sea voyages of Western Europe which guaranteed that despite the
superiority of other civilizations, Europe would emerge the international powerhouse of the future.
The Middle East has always been a trading house of ideas, cultures, and civilizations, its central
location have made this geographical region the heart of world culture again and again, its wars
defining not only its own destiny, but that of the human race. The Ottoman Empire's fight against
the Safavid, would last until both empires were crippled and subjected to European
domination. This peaked when the regions were carved up following World War I in 1918 by the Treaty
of Versailles. By this time, the regions oil reserves had made the Middle East
a key arena of European contention which lead to a combination of European cooperation and betrayal,
oppression and reticence. It was only a matter of time, before the region broke away independently.
The region's lack of services led to increasing Islamic radicalism, and the European's penchant for
making enemies guaranteed that the new nations had strong anti-progressive religious factions and poor
relations with most of Europe which continue to this day.
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