History of the Middle East
The Middle East, or the Near East, was one of the cradles of civilization: after the Neolithic Revolution and the adoption of agriculture, many of the world's oldest cultures and civilizations were created there. Since ancient times, the Middle East has had several lingua franca: Akkadian, Hebrew, Aramaic, Greek, and Arabic. The Sumerians, around the 5th millennium BC, were among the first to develop a civilization. By 3150 BC, Egyptian civilization unified under its first pharaoh. Mesopotamia hosted powerful empires, notably Assyria which lasted for 1,500 years. For centuries after the 7th century BC, the region was dominated by Persian powers like the Achaemenid Empire.
In the 1st century BC, the Roman Republic conquered most of the region, and its successor, the Roman Empire, that ruled from the 6th to 15th centuries AD referred to as the Byzantine Empire, grew significantly more. Roman pagan religions were replaced by Christianity in the 4th century AD. From the 3rd to 7th centuries, Rome ruled alongside the Sasanian Empire. From the 7th century, Islam spread rapidly, expanding Arab identity in the region. The Seljuk dynasty displaced Arab dominance in the 11th century, followed by the Mongol Empire in the 13th century.In the 15th century, the Ottoman Empire invaded most of Anatolia, and dissolved the Byzantine Empire by capturing Constantinople in 1453. The Ottomans and the Safavid dynasty were rivals from the early 16th century. By 1700, the Ottomans were pushed out of Hungary. After the Portuguese colonised Bahrain in 1521, making Bahrain the first Middle Eastern country to be fully colonised by a European power, it opened up pathways for the British Empire to gain control over the Persian Gulf in the 18th and 19th century, whilst the French colonial empire extended into Lebanon and Syria. Regional rulers sought modernization to match European powers. A key moment came with the discovery of oil, first in Persia, then in Bahrain, and other Gulf states later discovering oil, which lead to increased Western interest within the region. In the 1920s to 1940s, Syria and Egypt pursued independence, in 1948 Israel became an independent Jewish state.
The British, French, and Soviets withdrew from much of the region during and after World War II. In 1947 the United Nations plan to partition Palestine was voted in favor for a Jewish homeland. Amid Cold War tensions, pan-Arabism emerged in the region. The end of European colonial control, the establishment of Israel, and the rise of the petroleum industry shaped the modern Middle East. Despite economic growth, many countries faced challenges like political restrictions, corruption, cronyism and overreliance on oil. The wealthiest per capita are the small, oil-rich Gulf states, namely Qatar, Kuwait, Bahrain, and the United Arab Emirates.
Several key events shaped the modern Middle East, such as the 1967 Six-Day War, the 1973 OPEC oil embargo in response to US support for Israel in the Yom Kippur War, and the rise of Salafism/Wahhabism in Saudi Arabia that led to rise of Islamism. Additionally, the Iranian Revolution contributed to a significant Islamic revival. The dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 ended the Cold War, and regional conflict was soon made part of the war on terror. In the early 2010s, the Arab Spring triggered major protests and revolutions in the region. Clashes in western Iraq in 2013 set the stage for the Islamic State 's expansion.
Prehistoric period
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. One of the potential routes for early human migrations toward southern and eastern Asia is Persia.Haplogroup J-P209, the most common human Y-chromosome DNA haplogroup in the Middle East today, is believed to have arisen in the region 31,700 ± 12,800 years ago. The two main current subgroups, J-M267 and J-M172, which now comprise between them almost all of the population of the haplogroup, are both believed to have arisen very early, at least 10,000 years ago. Nonetheless, Y-chromosomes F-M89* and IJ-M429* were reported to have been observed in the Iranian plateau.File:Fertile crescent Neolithic B circa 7500 BC.jpg|thumb|upright=1.3|Area of the Fertile Crescent, circa 7500 BC, with main sites of the Pre-Pottery Neolithic periodThere is evidence of rock carvings along the Nile terraces and in desert oases. In the 10th millennium BC, a culture of hunter-gatherers and fishermen was replaced by a grain-grinding culture. Climate changes and/or overgrazing around 6000 BC began to desiccate the pastoral lands of Egypt, forming the Sahara. Early tribal peoples migrated to the Nile, where they developed a settled agricultural economy and more centralized society.
Ancient Levantines and their descendants exhibit a decrease of ~8% local Neolithic ancestry, which is mostly Natufian-like, every millennium, starting from the Pre-Pottery Neolithic to the Medieval period. It was replaced by Caucasus-related and Anatolian-related ancestries, from the north and west respectively. However, despite the decline in the Natufian component, this key ancestry source made an important contribution to peoples of later periods, continuing until the present. The presence of Neolithic Iranian ancestry among modern Levantines can be attributed to migrations during the Bronze Age.
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. The Sub-Saharan West African Fulani, the North African Tuareg, and European agriculturalists, who are descendants of these Neolithic agriculturalists, share the lactase persistence variant 13910*T. While shared by Fulani and Tuareg herders, compared to the Tuareg variant, the Fulani variant of 13910*T has undergone a longer period of haplotype differentiation. The Fulani lactase persistence variant 13910*T may have spread, along with cattle pastoralism, between 9686 BP and 7534 BP, possibly around 8500 BP; corroborating this timeframe for the Fulani, by at least 7500 BP, there is evidence of herders engaging in the act of milking in the Central Sahara.
Ancient period
The ancient Near East was the first to practice intensive year-round agriculture and currency-mediated trade, gave the rest of the world the first writing system, invented the potter's wheel and then the vehicular and mill wheel, created the first centralized governments and law codes, served as birthplace to the first city-states with their high degree of division of labor, as well as laying the foundation for the fields of astronomy and mathematics. However, its empires also introduced rigid social stratification, slavery, and organized warfare.Cradle of civilization, Sumer and Akkad
The earliest civilizations in history were established in the region now known as the Middle East around 3500 BC by the Sumerians, in southern Mesopotamia, widely regarded as the cradle of civilization. The Sumerians and the Akkadians—who extended their empire to northern Mesopotamia —and later Babylonians and Assyrians all flourished in this region."In the course of the fourth millennium BC, city-states developed in southern Mesopotamia that were dominated by temples whose priests represented the cities' patron deities. The most prominent of the city-states was Sumer, which gave its language to the area, and became the first great civilization of mankind. About 2340 BC, Sargon the Great united the city-states in the south and founded the Akkadian dynasty, the world's first empire."
During this same time period, Sargon the Great appointed his daughter, Enheduanna, as High Priestess of Inanna at Ur. Her writings, which established her as the first known author in world history, also helped cement Sargon's position in the region.
Egypt
Soon after the Sumerian civilization began, the Nile valley of Lower and Upper Egypt was unified under the Pharaohs approximately around 3150 BC. Since then, Ancient Egypt experienced 3 high points of civilization, the so-called "Kingdom" periods:- The Old Kingdom,
- The Middle Kingdom and, most notably,
- The New Kingdom.
The Levant and Anatolia
Thereafter, civilization quickly spread through the Fertile Crescent to the east coast of the Mediterranean Sea and throughout the Levant, as well as to Anatolia. Ancient Levantine kingdoms and city states included Ebla City, Ugarit City, Kingdom of Aram-Damascus, Kingdom of Israel, Kingdom of Judah, Kingdom of Ammon, Kingdom of Moab, Kingdom of Edom, and the Nabatean kingdom. The Phoenician civilization, encompassing several city states, was a maritime trading culture that established colonial cities in the Mediterranean Basin, most notably Carthage, in 814 BC.Assyrian empires
Mesopotamia was home to several powerful empires that came to rule almost the entire Middle East—particularly the Assyrian Empires of 1365–1076 BC and the Neo-Assyrian Empire of 911–605 BC. The Assyrian Empire, at its peak, was the largest the world had seen. 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."The Assyrian empires, particularly the third, had a profound and lasting impact on the Near East. Before Assyrian hegemony ended, the Assyrians brought the highest civilization to the then known world. From the Caspian to Cyprus, from Anatolia to Egypt, Assyrian imperial expansion would bring into the Assyrian sphere nomadic and barbaric communities, and would bestow the gift of civilization upon them."