Middle East
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"They say in the Middle East - a pessimist is simply an optimist with experience."
- – Ehud Barak
The Middle East is a region that broadly spans from Egypt in the west to India in the east with northern and southern borders being the Black & Caspian sea and the Arabian Sea respectively. In the middle of all of this is over 6000 years of civilization, at least half-a-dozen awesome and significant cultures, more history than you can shake a...anything at really and also a fuckton of culture, wars and mineable stuff. The importance of the region and it's myriad of cultures has not lessened in the 20th and 21st centuries as the region continues to be, if not exactly influential, then influenced due to the resources and politics going on around it and within it.
Since it is Europe's closest neighbour, the region and it's societies have been interacting with the smorgasbord of Europe's cultures since at least the Bronze Age so there are a number of analogues of Middle Eastern societies in fantasy and even sci-fi. Dungeons and Dragons has Al-Qadim, Lord of the Rings has Harad, Game of Thrones has Mereen and so on. And this is not even counting Video Games either.
Middle Eastern History
The Middle East, being one of the ¨cradles of civilization¨ has metric gigatons of history under it's belt, more than even China so the sections below will be the broadest overviews by necessity. Still the history van be roughly divided into 4 periods with a number of sub-periods within each. So strap yourself in as we dive into the deep end of history.
Ancient History (4000 BC - 500 AD)
After the period of various neolithic cultures discovering agriculture, the first human towns and city-states began to form (these could go back to as early as 9000-7000 BC as attested by Catal Huyuk and Jericho). The most prominent cities of this period were Uruk, Babillon, Elam and others. Two civilizations of note arose in this era around 3500 BC - Sumer(or Sag-Gig if you are OG Soomer) and Akkad(Barbarians who stole everything Sag-Gig developed at sword point) which are famous for their ziggurats (OG pyramids) and for laying the basis for much of civilization in the west since their stuff was picked up by Egyptians, then Greeks and so on. In about 2340 BC Sargon the Great united the various city-states in the south and thus founded the Akkadian dynasty - the world's first empire.
This set a kind of precedent for future powerful empires that would come to rule almost the entire Middle East. After Akkadians, of note are 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 yet 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.
From the early 6th century BC onwards there were several Persian states that dominated the region, beginning with the non-Persian Neo-Babylonian Empire, then their successor the Achaemenid Empire also known as the first Persian Empire. In the 300s BC a gigachad guy called Alexander the Great decided that he wanted to rule the world and so he went ahead and conquered everything from Greece to Egypt all the way to the border of India. Sadly he died just as he was getting to the process of ruling his mega-empire and in a final moment of chadery he declared that his empire would belong "to the strongest" and within 5 minutes there were a bunch of successor empires like the Seleucids, Bactrians, Ptolemaic Egypt and others, and virtually all of them had a city called Alexandria but the one in Egypt mattered most.
After Alexander, the various Alexandrian successor states were dicking around with each other, not noticing the big roman-shaped shadow rising in the west. In 66–63 BC the Roman general Pompey got shit done and conquered much of the Middle East in one fell swoop. The Romans united the region into yet another giga-empire and integrated the region with most of Europe and North Africa in terms of politics and economics, not to mention the globalising effect of free transit for imperial citizens and dependents. Even areas not directly under Rome were strongly influenced by the Empire which was the most powerful political and cultural entity for centuries.
Though Romans brought much of their culture, law and customs to the region, the Greek culture and language continued to dominate as well, being another strong cultural factor. The region effectively became the Empire's "bread basket" as the key agricultural producer and as a somewhat of a consolation for egyptians who survived as a culture this long - Ægyptus became by far the most wealthy Roman province and a center of learning.
It's also worth mentioning that to the east of Roman Empire were also two major polities - the Parthian and the Kushan empires. The former represented a constant threat to Rome's eastern boundaries before transitioning into the Sassanid Empire due to internal strife while Kushan would do it's own thing. There is also evidence of Tang China doing trade with the region and even being aware of Rome. Lastly, starting from the 30s AD - Christianity would see a significant spread from Palestine/Judea though it would not advance much farther east than Euphrates-Tigris border in a significant manner.
After the fragmentation of the Western Roman Empire, the eastern half decided that it really liked the color purple and rebranded itself as Basileion Ton Romaion which means in Greek...the Roman Empire (Byzantium being an anachronistic modern name but we will roll with it for the sake of convenience). Byzantium continued to trudge along, occupying the western portion of the region and even expanding to reconquer a respectable amount of the former Roman Empire in the 500s though from there it would decline in favour of other powers.
Medieval History (500 - 1000)
In the 5-6th centuries the Middle East was separated into small, weak states loomed over by two vast empires - the Sasanian Empire of the Persians and the Byzantine Empire in Anatolia plus the Levant. The Byzantines and Sasanians dicked with each other as a neat reflection of the rivalry between the Roman and the Persian empires. The Byzantine-Sasanian rivalry was also seen through their respective cultures and religions. The Byzantines were the champions of Hellenism and Christianity while the Sasanians thought themselves heroes of ancient Iranian traditions and of the traditional Persian religion - Zoroastrianism.
Meanwhile, down south we have the Arabian Peninsula which largely was and continued to be a dustbowl of little importance. The nomadic Bedouin tribes dominated the Arabian deserts where they worshiped idols and were organised into small clans based on mutual kinship. There were scant cities and agriculture in Arabia except for Mecca and Medina (then called Yathrib) which were important hubs for trade between Africa and Eurasia with most citizens there being merchants - this all will become important VERY SOON.
Right around 620-30s there arose a new ofshoot of abrahamic religions - Islam, and it would become big, really big. The details on Islam can be found on the respective page or on the other wiki, but the religion blew up FAST and in some 40 years after it's inception managed to conquer whole of Arabia, Persia and vast swathes of Byzantine empire. An interesting thing about Islam is that it's prophet Mohammad was also a military and political leader and while Jesus or Buddha left us general ethical and metaphysical messages, Mohammad was around for a bit longer and proscribed social and political tenets to the faith which gave rise to the concept of a Caliphate - a theocratic social polity that was to be the way to run things. The conquest stopped in the 750s as the new Caliphate ran out of steam and the usual fracturing between successors began after Muhammad was unalived, but Islam had by this time profiled itself as the pre-eminent socio-political and religious force in the Middle East under the various dynasties of the Caliphates.
Shortly after Islam became the dominant religion in Arabia, the Muslim conquests expanded very rapidly east and west, spreading across all of North Africa and even into southern Europe, where they claimed the entirety of Spain for centuries and besieged large parts of Italy and France. The Byzantines and Franks successfully halted further expansion, but Caliphate still claimed enough territory to rival and eventually supersede the Byzantines. The wealth and power that came with it ensured that the formerly backwater state of Arabia would remain a powerhouse for years to come.
The Arabian islamic vanguard would continue to dominate the newly conquered and islamised lands for the next 300 years. When Muhammad introduced Islam it had a the effect of nearly erasing the other various Middle Eastern cultures, although it also inspired advances in architecture, science, technology, and the formation of a distinct way of life giving it overall a mixed heritage(Read: Mostly translating what the chad Greeks have developed for centuries). Islam also created the need for spectacularly built mosques to flex on their Abrahamic siblings which also created a unique form of architecture. Meanwhile, missionaries and warriors worked to forcibly spread the religion from Arabia to North and Sudanic Africa, South and Southeast Asia, and the Mesopotamia area. This created a potent mix of cultures, especially in Africa, as converted kings and chiefs were a great source of slaves herded in thousands from the inland like Tippu Tip. Lastly, the "People of the Book" (Christians, Jews, and Zoroastrians) were allowed to live although in second class conditions. This courtesy wasn't extended to members of polytheist religions or Buddhism, with those folks being given the option of convert or die. This period would be disrupted by two events - the arrival of Seljuks/Turks and the Crusades.
The Crusades (1000 - 1300)
In the 1000's, the Persians (now rebranded as the Seljuks) started some shit with the Byzantines that ultimately ended with them sacking Constantinople. Between the eastern armies crossing the Hellespont and the blocking of pilgrimages into Jerusalem was the last straw for Christendom, and war were declared, whereupon thousands of ambitious princes, mercenaries, fugitives, and fanatics swarmed to Venice, got on boats, and proceeded to invade Jerusalem, intending to take back the Holy Land for Christendom from the Mohammedans.
Individual crusades were met with varied success; the first Crusade successfully caught the Seljuks offguard and led to the creation of the so-called Crusader States, which lasted for about a hundred years. Then an Arab warlord named Saladin who broke off from the Seljuks successfully rallied the people of Egypt and Syria to reclaim Jerusalem; following this, several more crusades were waged by Europe to retake the city, none of which were successful. Several centuries of war ensued, and while the invaders from Europe won the occasional dramatic victory, they were eventually forced away, although it did end any aspirations of Islam forcing its culture upon Europe.
And as the stalwart defenders of Arabia stood on the coast of Palestine, watching the sun set on their retreating enemies, they suddenly heard behind them the cheers and horse hooves of a million GODDAMN MONGOLIANS. Who played everyone like chads and allied with whomever was convenient at the time until Baibars, a blonde Gigachad warrior-slave kicked them in the nuts and sent them fleeing all the way back to Mongolia.
Ottoman Period (1300 - 1918)
The Ilkhanate hordes of Tulai ultimately were held out of Arabia, although the Seljuks fell to them completely. But as has been established in many other articles featuring the Mongols, they weren't very good at REMAINING Mongol once they ran out of things to put arrows in; in this case they discovered Islam and for once decided that some outsider's religion was actually their kind of thing, probably having to do with a similar bloodthirstiness towards "the other". What succeeded them was the Ottoman empire. Starting around east of Marmara, Bursa (then Prusa) Over the next 500 years the Ottomans would largely reunite all of the former Roman territories east of Cisalpine Gaul, into a massive, mostly-Islamic caliphate held together by the Turks, Greeks, and Egyptians that formed its foundation.
The power that held the Ottomans together was the Janissaries, a healthy dose of gunpowder and religious cunning. A Janissary was a Christian male from the Balkan areas of the Empire, forcibly conscripted in youth and forced to convert to Islam (including getting circumcised, since the conscriptees would have been mostly Orthodox), and then subjected to a rigorous military training that made them one of the most elite fighting forces of their time. They were forbidden to marry before forty, but were paid a lifetime salary. Although a brutal system, the resulting army was exceptionally professional, impartial to the empire's many tribes and territories, and utterly loyal to the Sultanate. The net effect of the Janissaries were that the individual animosities of various sects were dampened under Ottoman rule, in favor of the greater greed of the Sultanate.
For most of it's life, the Ottoman empire wasn't a terribly bad place to live if you were a Muslim. There was relative peace and prosperity due to flourishing trade as it stood at the crossroads between the Mediterranean and the sea routes to the far east. There was religious freedom as long as taxes were paid (except for non-monotheists) and all the wealth and luxuries of the world to be found in their markets. Interestingly, there were THREE separate, government sanctioned court systems, specifically one system for muslims, another for christians & jews, and the trade courts which handled civil and commercial disputes. The good times ended however when the Europeans discovered that it was slightly cheaper to sail all the fuck way around Africa than to pay Ottoman taxes.
During the Wars of Religion, the Ottomans were chiefly aligned against the Hapsburgs, Portugal, and Venice, fighting repeatedly over two hundred years for control of Austria and various Mediterranean islands, as well as control over the trade routes with India. They never made any serious overtures to cooperate with any of the European powers, being more of a constant opportunistic threat that kept the Holy Roman Empire from being able to focus on France or Great Britain. By the 19th century the decline of the empire was apparent, with the French making moves in Egypt and the Russians pushing on the Balkans and the Caucasus.
The Ottomans entered WW1 on the side of Germany essentially because their greatest existential threat was Russia. The war brought into full view the hopeless state of the Ottoman government and economy. They were ill prepared for war and ultimately their entry gave France and Britain a reason to move to openly annex territories the Ottomans had been holding in name only for decades.
Modern History (1918 - 20XX)
After Ottoman Empire was defeated and WW1 ended, French and Brits decided to screw their own Middle Eastern allies (as usual) and set up their own colonial regimes and puppet states, this was all but codified in the secret Sykes-Picot Agreement which created a bunch of artificial states that would all but guarantee that the region north of Saudi Arabia would remain a socio-political quagmire for many decades to come. Most notable ones are French Syria, British Palestine and Kuwait, as well as marionette Kingdom of Iraq. Saudi Arabia was also formed in that time period from old Arabian peninsula states, while Oman and Yemen became British puppets. This status quo remained all the way up to 1950s, even during WWII (well, if you don't count joint Allied intervention to Iran to prevent it from joining the Axis and get a new safe way for a land-lease, as well as short Iraqi campaign to weed out pro-Hitler Golden Square Party).
During the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s, Syria and Egypt made moves towards independence since the Sick Man of Bosphorus was fast dying of anachronism and lack of key reforms. Although the Kingdom of Egypt was technically "neutral" during World War II, Cairo soon became a major military base for the British and the country was occupied. In Palestine, a potent shitstorm was brewing as conflicting forces of Arab nationalism and Zionism created a situation the British could neither resolve nor gtfo from. The rise of Germany's Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party, had created a new urgency in the Zionist quest to immigrate to Palestine and create a Jewish state.
The modern Middle East was primarily shaped by three factors - decolonisation as Europe just gave up on the overcomplicated region to deal with issues at home, the founding of the state of Israel with all the "FUN" that entailed, and the growing importance of this stinky slimy substance called oil. A further layer of complexity was added by the new Cold War order which saw the world's two remaining superpowers - the USA/NATO and USSR/Warsaw Pact take a keen interest in the region due to various opportunities to dick with each other and the region being the largest (then) known source of civilization-driving oil, with the U.S.A. supporting Israel's right to exist, and the Soviets supporting Palestine's wish to drive the Jews into the sea, figuring they could finish off the Jews and have one less religion they'd have to finish off themselves if they could conquer the Middle East.
After the end of the Cold War the region experienced some notable changes. It allowed large numbers of Jews in USSR to gtfo from Russia and Ukraine into Israel - further bolstering the Jewish state. It also cut off the easiest source of weapons and loans from USSR meant to oppose pro-western regimes and lastly opened up the prospect of cheap oil from Russia, driving down the price of black gold and reducing the west's dependence on oil from the Arab states. In 1990 the Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein initiated an invasion of oil-rich arab state of Kuwait which lead to the USA having a permanent presence in the Persian Gulf and the Middle East by extension.
Fast forward some ten years and the greatest geopolitical fuckup since the fall of the USSR hit as USA saw the greatest attack on it's soil since the bloody Revolutionary War of the 1770s when a bunch of Al-Qaeda terrorists hijacked some planes and ramed them into the World Trade Center towers and the Pentagon, killing some 3000 Americans and wounding about 25000. Suffice it to say that the US was PISSED and soon invaded the country held to harbour the hoodlums - Afghanistan. The 9/11 attacks saw the USA focus it's geopolitical attention to the Middle East for the next 20-ish years as it dicked around in Iraq and Afghanistan. After the Arab Spring which saw an astounding wave of social upheavals from Morocco to Yemen - Syria also turned into a quagmire as the country found itself as a battleground between USA, resurgent Russia, Turkey, Israel and the infamous Islamic State/ISIS/ISIL.
As of the New 20s the situation in the Middle East seems to be returning to something resembling normality, which means a bunch of simmering conflicts between the usual suspects with a few flareups. This is mostly due to USA and Russia shifting their focus to the events going on in Eastern Europe. Meanwhile, China has been busy investing in the countries on the eastern fringes of the region (Pakistan, Uzbekistan and Iran to a lesser degree). The Arabian peninsula has seen some fighting too as Yemen imploded and became a proxy for Saudi Arabian and Iranian dick-slapping contest. The region is still in flux so stay tuned for further developments.
Middle Eastern Culture
In general, Middle Eastern and Central Asian cultures in the region can be split into Semitic (Hebrew, Syriac, Arab, Berber, etc), Iranic (Persian, Farsi, Tajik, Baloch, etc), and Turkic (Azeri, Kazakh, Uzbek, etc) alongside related/historically related groups on the outer edges of the region (such as the Caucasus-inhabiting Armenians or Georgians and the Urdu-Hindi groups in India in the former case or the Phoenicians, Carthaginians, Kushans, Scythians, Huns, & Mongols in the latter case). The long history of the region means many of the cultures and ethnic groups have long histories of contact and intermingling with each other with both peaceful and violent interactions like in the European Balkans.
Middle Eastern Religion, Gods and Mythology
"What have the Romans ever done for us!?"
- – Monty Python's Life of Brian
More than any other region, the Middle East is indelibly linked to the history of monotheism. Greek and Egyptian polytheistic systems coexisted alongside Persian Zoroastrianism and the Abrahamic Hebrew and many other minor sects. All of which were subjugated in the successive conquests of Alexander, and then Rome behind him.
The Romans acted as a great plow, tilling the region and leaving all the minor tribes and faiths fertile for proselytization. And the winner of this great disruption was Abrahamism, which stomped out most of its competitors (ie, the Gnostics such as Manichaeism). Christianity rose in lockstep with opposition to Roman rule, and then Islam in turn followed it as a response to the void as the empire fell, and finally eastern orthodoxy as the Catholic church began to schism.
By 1100 AD, the following could be said:
- Islam commanded the majority of the region, with the Shia branch being strongest in old Persia and the Sunni being dominant pretty much everywhere else. The Ibadi moderate spinoffs from the Khawarij zealots who attacked both sides were restricted to Oman with small pockets in the Sahara.
- Orthodox Christians (in Coptic, Assyrian and Greek flavors) were entrenched as minorities in the old Greek colonies north of Arabia, in Assyrian region (yes, the nation is still there, but is very small now) and in Egypt.
- Zoroastrianism and Judaism were entrenched as minorities all over, with some concentration in their respective homelands of Persia and Jerusalem respectively.
- Similar concentrations of other minority religions like the Gnostic Mandaeans/Sabians, Samaritans, Druze, Yazidi, Baha’i, or Yarsan but those are either in extremely remote regions or are very guarded from outsiders.
- Polytheism in the Middle East, in all of its Egyptian, Hellenistic, Babylonian, and Indo-Aryan (yes, the same root pantheon that the Germanic, Hellenistic, and pre-Brahmic/Hindu pantheons came from but that’s a whole different story) flavors, was extinct.
Middle Eastern Magic
The Middle East has its fair share of supernatural folklore such as the Djinn, ghouls, Shedu, Magi, etc. In addition, no thanks to Alexander the Great’s conquest of the region, alongside the long rule of the Diadochi, the Silk Road, and the Mongol invasions, meant that the Central Asian and Middle Eastern region served as a melting pot for ideas to be exchanged and and syncretized. One example being the conflation of Heracles from the Greco-Batrian settlers with the guardian bodhisattva, Vajrapāṇi, in Buddhism. On the other hand, once monotheism became dominant in the Middle East proper, such theological exchanges lessoned out with the focus being on philosophical, economic, and scientific exchanges instead.
Middle East Analogs in Fantasy
- Araby (duh), Badlands (in geographical sense) and Darklands (culturally) in Warhammer Fantasy Battle.
- Tallarn Desert Raiders Regiment of Imperial Guard in Warhammer 40,000.
- Al-Qadim campaign setting from DnD
- Near Harad from Lord of the Rings
- Prince of Persia series of vidya
- Shaqqislam factions in Infinity
- The Imperium (both the Empires ruled by the Corrino and Atreides Dynasties) in Dune