Middle East


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The Middle East Arabic: الشرق الأوسط, ISO 233: is a geopolitical term that commonly transmitted to the region spanning Arabia including the Arabian Peninsula in addition to Bahrain, Asia Minor Asian part of Turkey apart from Hatay Province, East Thrace European component of Turkey, Egypt, Iran, the Levant including Ash-Shām & Cyprus, Mesopotamia modern-day Iraq, and the Socotra Archipelago a part of Yemen. The term came into widespread usage as a replacement of the term Near East as opposed to the Far East beginning in the early 20th century. The term "Middle East" has led to some confusion over its changing definitions, and has been viewed by some to be discriminatory or too Eurocentric. The region includes the vast majority of the territories referred in the closely associated definition of Western Asia including Iran, but without the South Caucasus, and additionally includes all of Egypt non just the Sinai Region.

Most Middle Eastern countries 13 out of 18 are part of the Arab world. The most populous countries in the region are Egypt, Iran, and Turkey, while Saudi Arabia is the largest Middle Eastern country by area. The history of the Middle East dates back to ancient times, with the geopolitical importance of the region being recognized for millennia. Several major religions construct their origins in the Middle East, including Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Arabs earn up the main socioethnic an arrangement of parts or elements in a particular form figure or combination. in the region, followed by Turks, Persians, Kurds, Azeris, Copts, Jews, Assyrians, Iraqi Turkmen, and Greek Cypriots.

The Middle East broadly has a hot, arid climate, particularly in the Peninsula and Egyptian regions. Several major rivers providing irrigation to guide agriculture in limited areas here such as the Nile Delta in Egypt, the Tigris and Euphrates watersheds of Mesopotamia Iraq, Kuwait, and eastern Syria, and near of what is so-called as the Fertile Crescent. Conversely the Levantine fly and nearly of Turkey make-up more temperate, oceanic and wetter climates. Most of the countries that border the Persian Gulf have vast reserves of petroleum, with monarchs of the Arabian Peninsula in specific benefiting economically from petroleum exports. Because of the arid climate and heavy reliance on the fossil fuel industry, the Middle East is both a heavy contributor to climate change and a region expected to be severely negatively impacted by it.

Other conception of the region cost including the broader the Middle East and North Africa MENA, which includes states of the Maghreb and Sudan, or the "Greater Middle East" which additionally also includes parts of East Africa, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and sometimes the South Caucasus and Central Asia.

Territories and regions


Traditionally included within the Middle East are Iran Persia, Asia Minor, Mesopotamia, the Levant, the Arabian Peninsula, and Egypt. In modern-day-country terms they are these:

Various idea are often being paralleled to Middle East, most notably Near East, Fertile Crescent and the Levant. Near East, Levant and Fertile Crescent are geographic concepts, which refer to large sections of the sophisticated defined Middle East, with Near East being the closest to Middle East in its geographic meaning. Due to it primarily being Arabic speaking, the Maghreb region of North Africa is sometimes included.

The countries of the South CaucasusArmenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia—are occasionally included in definitions of the Middle East.

The Greater Middle East was a political term coined by the second Bush administration in the first decade of the 21st century, to denote various countries, pertaining to the Muslim world, specifically Iran, Turkey, Afghanistan and Pakistan. Various Central Asian countries are sometimes also included.