Ancient Middle Eastern and North African History | Middle East And North Africa

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ANCIENT MIDDLE EASTERN HISTORY

Modern Levant
The Middle East is the source of three of the world’s great religions — Judaism, Christianity and Islam — and the home of the ancient Egyptian and Mesopotamian cultures, The Seven Wonders of the World were in the Middle East and the first alphabet, first writing, first school, first calendar and the first code of laws originated there. The world oldest inhabited city (Damascus) is there as well as most of the places mentioned in the Bible.

The horse arrived in the Sahara around around 1650 B.C. when the Hyksos conquered northern Egypt by chariot. The camel arrived in the Sahara around 200 B.C. A bas-relief from the Sumerian city of Ur — dated to 2500 B.C. — shows four onagers (donkeylike animals) pulling a cart for a king.

The Arab world describes the countries in the Middle East and North Africa where the majority people speak Arabic and belong to the Arab ethnic group. It excludes Israel, Turkey and Iran, which are dominated, respectively, by Jews, Turks and Persians, but includes the Maghreb countries of Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia, which are sometimes not regarded as part of the Middle East. The Muslim world refers to the countries whose populations are made up predominately of Muslims. These include the countries of the Middle East, the Maghreb countries plus non-Arab countries with majority Muslim populations such as Indonesia, Malaysia, Pakistan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, Djibouti, Somalia, Niger, Senegal. Some Sub-Saharan African counties, particularly in West Africa and to a lesser extent East Africa, have large numbers of Muslims.

Websites on Islamic History: History of Islam: An encyclopedia of Islamic history historyofislam.com ; Oxford Encyclopedia of the Islamic World oxfordislamicstudies.com ; Sacred Footsetps sacredfootsteps.com ; Islamic History Resources uga.edu/islam/history ; Internet Islamic History Sourcebook fordham.edu/halsall/islam/islamsbook ; Islamic History friesian.com/islam ; Muslim Heritage muslimheritage.com ; Chronological history of Islam barkati.net ; Arabs: Arab American National Museum arabamericanmuseum.org ; Summary of the History of the Arabs, Library of Congress loc.gov ; Arab News arabnews.com

Books:”History of Arab People” by Albert Hourani (Faber and Faber, 1991); “Islam, a Short History “ by Karen Armstrong (Modern Library, 2000); “ Arabian Sands, Marsh and Mountains” by Wilfred Thesiger; “Beyond Belief: Islamic Excursions Among the Converted People” by V.S. Naipul (Random House, 1998) with essays on Indonesia, Iran, Pakistan and Malaysia. Kenneth Pollack’s “Arabs at War” is regarded as a classic study.

Near East, Middle East, North Africa, Maghreb and Levant

20120210-Africa_(Arab_Maghreb_Union).png
Maghreb
Culturally the Arab world is divided into two spheres—the Middle East and North Africa—with Egypt serving a the junction between the two. These days many people think of the Middle East as embracing the Arab countries of Egypt, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Yemen, Oman, and Iraq. Some people also include Cyprus, Turkey, Israel and Iran, and a lesser degree Afghanistan, which are all not Arab. Sometimes Libya is included in the Middle East but is generally thought of being in North Africa. Sometimes Sudan and Mauritania are included but they are generally thought of being in Africa.

The term “Near East” was traditionally used to describe the region between the eastern shores of the Mediterranean to present-day Afghanistan. The term was commonly used to describe the region until the 1960s, when it started becoming more fashionable to use the term Middle East. The French and the U.S. State Department (2003) still use the term Near East. The United Nations uses the terms Near East, Middle East and West Asia.

If the North African countries of Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia are included the Middle East describes an area that stretches from the Atlantic coast of northern Africa to Afghanistan, a distance of around 5,600 kilometers and encompasses around 350 million people. Often the term Middle East is shortened to Mideast. West Asia sometimes used to the area between Afghanistan and Turkey.

The Near East is a Eurocentric term that was first used in the mid 19th century to distinguish it from the Far East which was defined in the 1852 Oxford English Dictionary as “the extreme eastern regions of the Old World. The term Nearer East was used before Near East. The first recorded use of the Middle East was in Catholic World magazine in 1897.

The primary ethnic groups of the Middle East are the Arabs, Turks, Iranians and Israelis (newly evolved from ancient Hebrews and Jews from around the world) . The Middle East includes two cradles of civilization — Mesopotamia and ancient Egypt — and is the birthplace of the three great monotheist religions — Judaism, Christianity and Islam.

North Africa is used to describe the countries of Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia and Libya. Often Egypt is left out even though it is part of Africa. The Levant is the area between the Mediterranean and Mesopotamia. Referred to in the Bible as the “land flowing with milk and honey,” it usually refers an area occupied by modern-day Israel, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon. Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia and Libya make up the Maghreb region of North Africa. Maghreb (also spelled Maghrib) literally means “the West” or “west of the setting sun” in Arabic. It refers to the western side of the Arab world and includes all of North Africa. It usually refers Morocco, Tunisia, and Algeria and sometimes also Libya and Mauritania.

Jericho

Jericho — the Biblical city of Joshua, trumpets and falling walls — is regarded by some as the oldest city in the world. Established around 7,500 B.C. in an arid valley 600 feet below sea level in Palestine near the Dead Sea., ancient Jericho was home to 2000 to 3000 people that survived on plants that thrived in a fertile area around an oasis. Strains of wheat and barley and obsidian tools have been discovered that came from elsewhere. Ancient Jericho had an elaborate system of walls, towers and moats. The circular wall that surrounded the settlement had a circumference of about 200 meters and was four meters high. The wall in turn was surrounded by a 30-foot-wide, 10-foot-deep moat. The technology used to build them was virtually the same as those used in medieval castles. [Source: "History of Warfare" by John Keegan, Vintage Books]

Located near a permanent spring a few miles west of the Jordan River and excavated by Kathleen Kenyon, Jericho is certainly one of the world’s oldest fortified settlement but whether it qualifies as a city is a matter of some debate. There are indications of settlement after 9000 B.C.. This settlement grew to city-like status by 7000 B.C. The archaeological site is situated in the plain of the Jordan Valley two kilometers northwest of modern Jericho city. It is a large artificial mound, rising 21 meters high and covering an area of about one acre.

In 7000 B.C., Jericho encompassed of about eight to ten acres and was home to estimated two to three thousand people. It was inhabited by people who depended on collecting wild seeds for food. It is appears that they did not plant seeds, but harvested wild grains using scythes with flint edges and straight bone handles and used stone mortars with handles for grinding them. Some people lived in caves, while others occupied primitive villages with round huts made from sun-dried bricks. They buried their dead with jewelry in graves made out of rock.

The early inhabitants of Jericho dug out canals to bring water from nearby sources to where they lived and perhaps to irrigate land with wild plants they harvested for food. They constructed huge two-meter-thick walls around their villages. Inside the main fortified settlement was a circular stone tower, nine meters in diameter, and ten meters high, built for protection and requiring thousands of man hours to build. The people of ancient Jericho practiced the domestication of animals, and weaving mats, as well as animal hunting, and perhaps, agriculture. They used spears and flint-capped arrows. They also used hatchets to cut tree branches. Some inhabitants expanded from their settlements in search of new homes outside their boundaries.

The Archeological Museum of Jordan has a stunning collection of 9,000-year-old sculptured heads from Jericho. Consisting of on an actual skull with plaster skin and sea shell eyes, each head is different. Some archeologists claim they were sealed "spirit" traps," designed to keep the soul from wandering around. Jericho.

History of Tell es-Sultan (Ancient Jericho)

According to UNESCO: “Tell es-Sultan, the ancient city of Jericho, is the lowest (258 m below sea level) and the oldest town on earth. It grew up around a perennial spring, Ain es-Sultan, in an area of fertile alluvial soil which attracted hunter-gatherer groups to settle down, and to start a process of plant and animal domestication. Archaeological excavations carried out in the mid-20th century evidenced 23 layers of ancient civilizations at the site. The earliest remains date back to the Natufian period, 10th-8th millennia BC. By the 8th millennium B.C. Jericho became a big fortified town surrounded by a stone wall supported by a massive round tower. These are the earliest urban fortifications known in the world, later several times replaced. Their early date took the history of urbanity and domestication back several millennia at the time of their discovery in the 1950s. The Neolithic population ofJerichodeveloped a complex society where house construction, crafts, such as weaving and matting, and mythological and social conception of burial and religion were practiced. The Neolithic houses were built with dried mud bricks: the initial round shape of their construction developed into the rectangular form. [Source: UNESCO ==]

plastered skull from Jericho

“During the Early Bronze Age, Tell es-Sultan was a fortified town and one of the most flourishing Canaanite City-States in Palestine. It lasted more than a thousand years before being demolished by nomadic groups in the last centuries of the second millennium BC. Afterwards, the site was rebuilt again at the beginning of the Middle Bronze Age, and surrounded by a mud brick wall that lasted until 1580 BC, when it was violently destroyed by fire. However,Jerichowas probably scantily re-occupied in the late Bronze Age, since few remains of this period were found. Throughout the Iron Ages, Tell es-Sultan was re-occupied again, especially in the 7th century BC, a phase which lasted until the end of Iron Age II (586 BC). Thereafter, the tell was no longer occupied, although Byzantine remains were found on its eastern side close to the spring of Ain es-Sultan. The surrounding area, however, today’s Jerichoand environs, was continuously occupied in a fluctuating history over the last two and a half millennia. ==

“Numerous religious events and beliefs are associated with the site and area. For example, the spring of Ain es-Sultan is biblically called Elisha’s spring, in which the prophet (Elisha) made the water at Jericho healthy. Luke narrates that Jesus visited Jericho more than once; on one such occasion (19:1.4), “Jesus entered Jericho and was passing through it. Now a man named Zacchaeus was trying to get a look at Jesus, but being a short man he could not see over the crowd. So he ran on ahead and climbed up into a sycamore tree to see him”. High above the site, perched on the cliff facing the west, is the monastery of the Mount of Temptation, traditionally built at or close to the place where Jesus, fasting for 40 days after his baptism, was offered by Satan the kingdom of the world in exchange for his homage. ==

“The archaeological methodology applied to make these discoveries is also regionally significant. It involved the use at Tell es-Sultan of techniques associated with the English archaeologist, Mortimer Wheeler, developed by him in the 1930s and passed on to his associates and students such as Kathleen Kenyon. She followed his precepts at Tell es-Sultan with large, deep, horizontal trenches designed to expose stratigraphy rather than merely find ‘remains’ or objects. Thus the wall and tower, and indeed the evidence of domestication, were found in a secure cultural and chronological context. The well-preserved trenches remain as witnesses to the development of archaeological research methods inPalestine. Visitors can still see some of the layers in which lies the history of the tell. ==

Ain Ghazal

Ain Ghazal, an archeological site in Amman, Jordan was one of the largest population centers in the Middle East (three times larger than Jericho) from 7200 to 5000 B.C., a period in human history when sem-nomadic hunters and gathers were adapting to farming and animals herding and organizing themselves into cities. Ain Ghazal means

Ain Ghazal statue

Ain Ghazal covers about 30 acres. The people were farmers and hunters and gatherers. They used stone tools and weapons and made clay figures and vessels. They lived in multi-room houses with stone walls and timber roof beams and cooking hearths. Plaster with decorations covered the walls and floors. They are meat and milk products from goats, grew wheat barely, lentils, peas and chickpeas, hunted wild cattle, boar and gazelles and gathered wild plants, almonds, figs and pistachios.

Mysterious human figures unearthed at Ain Ghazal, are among the oldest human statues ever found. Made of lime plaster and dating back to 7000 B.C., the figures were about 3½ feet tall and have bitumen accented eyes and look like aliens from outerspace. Scholars believe they played a ceremonial role and may have been images of gods or heros.

The figures were discovered 1985 by the driver of a bulldozers clearing the way for a road. The statues were made of delicate materials — so delicate they whole site was unearthed and shipped to a Smithsonian laboratory where the figures it took ten years to assemble the figures.

The figures come in two types: full figures and busts. Both types were made by forming plaster over a skeleton made of bundles of reed wrapped in twine. Facial features were probably made by hand with simple tools made of bone, wood or stone. The plaster technology that was used was fairly advanced and required heating limestone to temperatures if 600̊ to 900̊C

Archeologists working in Ain Ghazal found what they say may be the world's oldest known game. The game board, a limestone slab, has two sets of circular depressions and bears a striking resemblance to games played in the Middle East today with counting stones. The slab was found in a house, and because it seemed to serve no utilitarian or ceremonial function archeologists concluded it most likely was a game board. [National Geographic Geographica, February 1990].

Mesopotamia, Indian and Middle Eastern Trade

seal from the Indus Valley

The Persian Gulf lies between two of the major breadbaskets of the ancient world, the Tigris-Euphrates area (Mesopotamia, meaning "between the rivers") in present-day Iraq and the Nile Valley in Egypt. Mesopotamia, a part of the area known as the Fertile Crescent, was important not only for food production but also for connecting East to West. [Source: Helen Chapin Metz, Persian Gulf States: A Country Study, Library of Congress, 1993 *] Rivers provided the water that made agriculture possible. Agriculture, in turn, enabled people to settle in one area and to accumulate a food surplus that allowed them to pursue tasks besides growing food, namely, to create a civilization. They chose leaders, such as kings and priests; they built monuments; they devised systems of morality and religion; and they started to trade.*

Mesopotamia became the linchpin of ancient international trade. The fertile soil between the Tigris and the Euphrates produced a arge surplus of food; however, it did not support forests to produce the timber necessary to build permanent structures. The region also lacked the mineral resources to make metals. Accordingly, the early inhabitants of Mesopotamia were forced to go abroad and trade their food for other raw materials. They found copper at Magan, an ancient city that lay somewhere in the contemporary state of Oman and, via Magan, traded with people in the Indus Valley for lumber and other finished goods.*

Trade between Mesopotamia and India was facilitated by the small size of the Persian Gulf. Water provided the easiest way to transport goods, and sailors crossed the gulf fairly early, moving out along the coasts of Persia and India until they reached the mouth of the Indus. Merchants and sailors became middlemen who used their position to profit from the movement of goods through the gulf. The people of Magan were both middlemen and suppliers because the city was a source of copper as well as a transit point for Indian trade. Over time, other cities developed that were exclusively entrepôts, or commercial way stations. One of the best known of these cities was Dilmun.*

Garamantes

The Garamantes were ancient people that inhabited the Sahara. Descended from Berbers and Saharan pastoralists, they first appeared around 1000 B.C. and were described by Herodotus in the 5th century B.C. as an exceedibly numerous people who herded cattle and hunted “troglodyte Ethiopians” from horse chariots. The Garamantes produced one of the largest totally desert-based kingdoms ever before dying out. At their height around A.D. 150 they controlled an area of 70,000 square miles in southern Libya, with a capital in Garama.

The Garamantes were a tough and aggressive people. They had to be to prosper in the middle of the Sahara. They took slaves to keep their empire going and penetrated as far south as Nigeria to collect slaves. Some slaves were obtained as tribute. Other were obtained in slaving raids. Rock art from the period depicted men in two-wheeled chariots with weapons.

Garamantes traded with the Romans and other people in northern African and the Mediterranean. They imported wine, olive oil and luxury good. and exported slaves and served as middlemen for gold, amazonite, carnelian and ivory being taken from Africa to the Mediterranean. Judging from the jewelry and high quality glassware and statuary and baths and temples unearthed in Garamantes region they did quite well for themselves.

Garamantes produced rock engravings of horsemen accompanied by as yet undeciphered inscriptions in Libyco-Berber, a writing system that dates to the 3rd century B.C. The rock art was often placed at the foot of massive escarpments. They worshipped many Egyptian gods, with the primary god being Ammon (the god of the desert) and his son the bull-headed deity Gurzil. Some members of the elite were buried under small pyramids.

Garamante Water Mining

qanat
The Garamantes made the desert bloom using system of underground wells, shafts and tunnels similar to the qanats in Iran, Afghanistan and western China. They built over a 1,000 miles of tunnels, which are known in Berber as “foggias” . The shafts were 10 meters apart and up to 40 meters deep, with an average depth of about the 10 meters. In fields nurtured with these wells they grew grapes, figs, sorghum, barely, pulses and wheat.

The Garamantes wells and tunnels — the largest ever built outside Iran — were dug by a workforce of between 1,000 and 2,000 slaves. The fact they were underground kept the water from evaporating. It was difficult, arduous and dangerous work. In places where the shafts and tunnels were dug in gravel and sand there was always the danger of cave ins. No doubt many people died. In places where holes where dug through limestone the work was not as dangerous but no doubt it wasn’t much fun chisel away at rock with hand tools under the hot Saharan sun.

The Garamantes tunnel system mined fossil water rather than redirecting water from a lake or river. They borrowed the technology from the Persians when they introduced it to Egypt to tap into water laden sandstone aquifers, The Garamantes civilization lasted as long as the water supply estimated at 30 billion gallons lasted. When the water ran out in A.D. 4th century the civilization collapsed.

Greco-Roman Period in the Middle East

After Alexander the Great died in 323 B.C. his generals spent 40 years fighting among themselves before three main dynasties emerged: the Antigonids of Asia Minor and Greece; the Ptolemies in Egypt; and the Selecuids, who occupied a stretch of land that extended from present-day Lebanon to Persia. The eastern part of the Selecuid empire broke off to become the Parthian Empire.

Much of what is now the Muslim world was under Roman rule for many centuries. Romans conquered most of Asia Minor in 188 B.C., Syria an Palestine in 64 and 63 B.C. and Egypt in 30 B.C. "No distinction between realm of Caesar and the realm of God."

The only inland invasion of Arabia by a European power took place in 24 B.C. when the legions under Aelius Galus marched southward to capture the Frankincense Trail kingdoms. Betrayed by local guides and tired and thirsty, they retreated back home before reaching their destination of Saba in present-day Yemen.

With the arrival of Islam in the seventh century, Roman influences largely disappeared. The Romans left behind Al Jizah, a stone-block basin started in Roman times that now holds 23 million gallons of water, enough to supply a large city should a three-year drought occur.

Image Sources: Wikimedia Commons, The Louvre, The British Museum

Text Sources: Internet Ancient History Sourcebook: Mesopotamia sourcebooks.fordham.edu , National Geographic, Smithsonian magazine, especially Merle Severy, National Geographic, May 1991 and Marion Steinmann, Smithsonian, December 1988, New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Discover magazine, Times of London, Natural History magazine, Archaeology magazine, The New Yorker, BBC, Encyclopædia Britannica, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Time, Newsweek, Wikipedia, Reuters, Associated Press, The Guardian, AFP, Lonely Planet Guides, “World Religions” edited by Geoffrey Parrinder (Facts on File Publications, New York); “History of Warfare” by John Keegan (Vintage Books); “History of Art” by H.W. Janson Prentice Hall, Englewood Cliffs, N.J.), Compton’s Encyclopedia and various books and other publications.

Last updated March 2024