1. GEOGRAPHY & THE MIDDLE EAST
An Ancient and Modern Crossroads

2. The Middle East - What’s in a name?
Arab World?
Arabic speaking countries from N.Africa, Arabian Peninsula, & SW Asia
(excludes Iran, Turkey, & Israel)
Islamic World?
Includes Arabic speaking countries & Iran & Turkey. (leaves out Indonesia, Pakistan, Afghanistan)
Middle East?
19th Century -European defined name; differentiate India & Far East

3. How does geography impact the development of a region?
Brainstorm a list of ideas:

4. MOUNTAINS
How might mountains impact the development of culture and civilization?
Agricultural terraces along the Karun River in the foothills of the Zagros Mountains (Luristan, Iran).
Western Hajar Mountains, Nizwa, Oman

5. MOUNTAINS Mountains are often dividers. They:
make transportation and communication difficult.
they often protect minority populations and their cultures who take refuge in them making it more difficult for central governments to control these groups.
are difficult to cross, so they may be natural borders dividing empires and keeping out armies.

6. Mountains can also divide climate zones
(For example, rainfall may fall much more on one side of a mountain range than on the other, creating fertile agricultural zones on one side and arid zones fit for, at best, animal grazing on the other.)
Zagros Mountains, Iran
Taurus Mountains, Turkey

7. How might deserts impact the development of civilization and culture?
Jordan Desert on Left / Saudi Arabia on right
How might deserts impact the development of civilization and culture?

8. THE SAHARA DESERT Makes up nearly 10% of African continent
World’s largest hot desert
Most underdeveloped & shaped over time by winds
Landscape includes sand dunes (15%), gravel plateaus, dry valleys & salt flats.
Most of the water is from seasonal streams & underground aquifers.
The only permanent river in the in the desert is the Nile.
Think of the Middle East and the desert is likely one of the first images to spring to mind. While there is much more geographic diversity in the region than most people realize, the desert s of the Middle East truly are some of the largest and most awe-inspiring in the world.
is the world's
Since the Sahara Desert makes up nearly 10% of the African continent, the Sahara is often cited as the world's largest
desert. This is not entirely true, however, as it is only the world's largest hot desert. Based on the definition of a desert as an area receiving less than 10 inches (250 mm) of precipitation per year, the world's largest desert is actually the continent of Antarctica at 5,339,573 sq mi (13,829,430 sq km).

9. Life in the Sahara
Most of the people living in the Sahara today do not live in cities;
nomads who move from region to region throughout the desert.
many different nationalities & languages in the region
Arabic is most widely spoken.
Arab, Berber national groups
. For their meals, the nomads can use only foods such as rice and dates that are easily carried as they move around. They also use sheep and camel meat in their recipes because those animals move with them.

10. RUB AL KHALI DESERT
Welcome to the Rub al Khali, or Empty Quarter—a world of harsh extremes that may rank as both the least, and most, hospitable place on Earth
Taking up a fifth of the Arabian Peninsula, the Rub al Khali (literally, "quarter of emptiness"), or the Sands for short, is the world's largest sand sea. At more than 225,000 square miles (583,000 square kilometers), it takes in substantial portions of Saudi Arabia, as well as parts of Oman, Yemen, and the United Arab Emirates to create an arid wilderness larger than France. It holds roughly half as much sand as the Sahara, which is 15 times the Empty Quarter's size but composed mostly of graveled plains and rocky outcrops.
However, in 1948 Al-Ghawār, the world’s largest oilfield, was discovered there.
Yemen, Saudi Arabia*, Qatar, United Arab Emirates, and Oman
250,000 square miles (1/4 of Saudi Arabia)

11. Tigris & Euphrates Rivers
What role do rivers play in the development of civilization and culture? Give examples. Your homework tonight will go into great detail on this subject.
Tigris & Euphrates Rivers

12. NATURAL VEGETATION
What conclusions about civilization and culture in the region can you make based on this information?

13. POPULATION DENSITY
What conclusions about civilization and culture in the region can you make based on this information?

14. NATURAL RESOURCES
What conclusions about civilization and culture in the region can you make based on this information?

15. MIDDLE EAST – U.S. LATITUDE LINES
What conclusions about civilization and culture in the region can you make based on this information?

16. water

17. WATER
Water security has always been an issue in the arid environment of most of the Middle East.
The Middle East and North Africa (MENA)* is the most water-scarce region of the world. Home to 6.3 percent of the world's population, the region contains only 1.4 percent of the world's renewable fresh water. As population pressures in the region increase, the demand for water resources rises. This brief examines the challenges of meeting this demand given scarce water resources. Country strategies to deal with water shortages depend on local conditions, including topography, the extent of water scarcity, available financial resources, and technical and institutional capacity.
More than 160 villages are abandoned now in Syria alone. According to a United Nations report on the drought, 800,000 people have lost their livelihood. Hundreds of thousands left once-fertile land that turned to dust and pitched tents near the big cities, looking for any kind of work.
Global Water Stress – Interactive Map

18. WATER SCARCITY Factors Contributing to Water Scarcity
Growing population
Changes in Climate drought
Construction of Dams
“Many of the wars of this [20th] century were about oil, World Bank Vice President Ismail Serageldin once observed, but the wars of the next century will be about water.”
But rainfall, or lack of it, is not the only culprit, he says. Syria and Iraq blame Turkey's huge network of dams on the Tigris and Euphrates rivers for reducing water supplies by 50 percent.
Turkey is the site of the headwaters of a river system that Syria and Iraq depend on. An informal agreement determines the flow downstream.
"When we had bad relations with Turkey, they reduced the flow of water despite the agreement, and now, thank God, we have excellent relations with Turkey, and hopefully, we will not see any cutoff of water," Sukkar says.
Turkey says there is enough water for everyone, but Syria and Iraq waste their share. Amery, the water expert, says the Turks are partly right.
"The issue is water but it goes far beyond water," he says.
Amery says the key to head off a water crisis is more efficient management of a scarce resource. But he adds politics, not climate, is the problem.
“Water use has been growing far faster than the number of people. During the 20th century the world population increased fourfold, but the amount of freshwater that it used increased nine times over.”
Middle East Water Crisis Video Clip I

19. How does geography impact the development of culture?

20. APPLYING THE ELEMENTS OF CULTURE – The Middle East
Environment & Geography
Religion & Values
Government & Laws
Economy
Modes of Expression
Social Organization
Think about the role of religion in the development of culture in the Middle East…
Which three monotheistic religions were founded in this region of the world?