How important is the Middle East? What were the biggest events that had an influence on him? How many empires and peoples dominated the region? Why did it become such a large, conflict-ridden territory? These and other questions can be easily answered with the help of the historiographical articles that follow.
Middle East
Middle East
Knowing and studying the Middle East has become extremely important for several reasons, mainly due to the fact that this region has been the scene of more events than any other part of the world. Although Africa was the place where the human species originated, the greatest civilizational advances took place in the Middle East, such as the cultivation of most basic food crops, the training of various animals and the founding of the first agricultural villages.
In fact, it was precisely in the Middle East that the oldest cities in the world[1], the first governments, religious and legal systems arose. Other events that graced the Middle East were the invention of writing and the preservation of records, the lack of which would make world history as we know it completely impractical. Over the 10,000 years before the Common Era (or before Christ), the people who inhabited the Middle East managed to develop skills due to the difficulties faced in a challenging environment. Among the skills acquired, it is worth mentioning the domestication of donkeys and cattle for loading and transporting goods; construction of ovens; techniques for using large rivers to produce other crops; molding bronze and, later, iron tools and weapons.
In the context of writing, these people also created appropriate alphabets to send messages and preserve records on clay tablets or papyrus rolls. In relation to the spiritual field, cults and rituals were developed with the purpose of manifesting the beliefs that gave meaning to their lives.
These people were greatly influenced by the Medes and Persians, coming from the north, and the Semitic peoples of Arabia. In the fourth century BC, the region came under the rule of the Macedonians of Alexander the Great, who brought with them their own customs and cultures. Finally, starting in the last century before the Common Era, the territories east and south of the Mediterranean were taken over by the Roman Empire.
The Persians
Persia and Rome were the two great empires that exerted strong influence at the beginning of the Common Era. During the Achaemenid dynasty (550-330 BC), the ancient Persian royal house, Persia (present-day Iran) administered several ethnic and religious groups in an area that stretched from the Indus to the Nile. Among kings and nobles, but not all, Zoroastrianism was the predominant religion of the 6th century that defended the existence of a supreme divinity, Ahura Mazda – known as “Lord of Wisdom” –, who was considered by his followers to be the creator of the two worlds: the material and the spiritual, as well as the origin of “light” and “darkness”, founder of the moral order, legislator and judge of all beings. On the other hand, Ahriman meant the opposite force, manifested by chaos and darkness.
The Achaemenid kings admitted religious freedom, as long as their subjects respected the laws, paid their taxes and sent their children to serve in the Persian army. The Persian empire followed the same structural pattern as most multicultural dynastic governments that emerged in the ancient period. When the Achaemenids lost their empire to Alexander the Great, he intended to incorporate the Hellenistic style into Middle Eastern culture. It is worth mentioning that several ideals, institutions and administrative models from the Egyptian, Syrian, Mesopotamian and Persian governments were inserted into their distant kingdom, but with short duration.
The Romans
It is interesting to highlight that cultural fusion only occurred when the Roman Empire began its influence over the Middle East, or rather, the Romans encouraged trade and the exchange of people and, consequently, customs. The various religions and mystical cults of the Middle East began to spread among the Romans, including Mithraism, a cult originating from Persia, and Christianity, the Jewish sect spread and expanded with the support of Paul of Tarsus and the apostles. Most of the first representatives of the Christian church lived in Anatolia, Syria, Egypt and North Africa, where the initial development of Christian doctrines and institutions took place.
Although Christianity was still prohibited by the Roman Empire in the 3rd century, this religion already predominated in the eastern Mediterranean region. Christians came to associate Christ with the attractive aspects of earlier religions. For example, the Egyptians identified the resurrected Christ with Osiris, one of their most important ancient gods who had also died and been resurrected.
The Roman emperor Constantine (313-337) inaugurated a phase of utmost importance for Christianity, the Middle East and the West when he revealed himself to be a nominal Christian. Since then, Rome has become a Christian empire (although not yet official), the consequence of which was the construction of a new capital, named by him as “New Rome” and, later, by its inhabitants as “Constantinople”, located between the Black Sea and the Aegean.
Byzantium, its oldest nomenclature, remained alive in the language of historians who call their new state the “Byzantine Empire”. Some continued to call it “Rome” and when Arabs, Persians and Turks speak of “rum”, they are actually referring to what we know as the Byzantine Empire, its lands (especially Anatolia) or the adherents of its religion. , Greek Orthodox Christianity. This “New Rome” was far from the banks of the Tigris River and the ancient Roman ideal of a universal and multicultural empire survived, but in the face of the Christian and Byzantine structure. Later, Arabs and Muslims would use the same strategy in their own empires.
The Eastern Roman Empire brought improvements to some people through the flourishing of commercial and manufacturing cities, in addition to enriching Greek, Syrian and Egyptian traders due to trade between Europe, Asia and East Africa. Camels, a means of transport used by Arab nomads, carried goods such as fabrics and spices (mainly gold, frankincense and myrrh) across the deserts. Others used navigation along the Red Sea, the Gulf and the Indian Ocean towards the eastern lands. The ruins of buildings in Leptis Magna (Libya), Jerash (Jordan) and Ba’albek (Lebanon) [photo below] prove precisely the greatness of Rome in the Middle East.
On the other hand, the dark side of Roman rule was quite accentuated. Syria and Egypt, where the breadbaskets of the ancient world were located, had to pay high taxes to support the large occupying armies and a high-ranking bureaucracy in Rome and Constantinople. To escape taxes, peasants migrated to big cities, however, these were places lacking opportunities for these workers. Soon, this rural class revolted over social or religious issues. At first, the Roman aristocracy claimed to tolerate other beliefs and customs, but, as is well known, before Rome adopted Christianity as its official religion, Roman soldiers even destroyed the Second Temple in Jerusalem to suppress a Jewish rebellion. For refusing to worship the Roman emperor, many early Christians were tortured or killed in very grotesque and inhumane ways.
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[1] The emergence of these urban centers gave rise to the first city-states, which served as the basis for the first civilizations in the Middle East: Mesopotamia and Egypt. Politically, both Egypt and Mesopotamia were organized in the form of theocracies, in which the sovereign held political and religious powers and the class of priests had special privileges. In general, we can mention the economic activities of Egypt and Mesopotamia in the so-called "Asian Mode of Production". By this definition, all land belonged to the State and was used by the community, which consumed its own production and was obliged to deliver the surplus to the rulers. The obligation of all free men to render services to the State is known as "collective servitude." Furthermore, because they were located along large rivers – Egypt bathed by the Nile River and Mesopotamia developed between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers – communities depended on control over their flood and flow cycles. They developed irrigation civilizations with mastery of irrigation techniques, including the construction of dikes and canals. Unlike Egypt, which, since approximately 3200 BC, was a centralized state, Mesopotamia was dominated by several peoples who imposed their determinations on the dominated, but without losing the general characteristics of the organization of the region. The main peoples to leave their marks in Mesopotamia were the Sumerians, the Amorites (First Babylonian Empire), the Assyrians and the Chaldeans (Second Babylonian Empire).
Author: Vanessa Chamma
Graduated in Arabic Literature and Bachelor in International Relations
Researcher and Author
Lines of Research: History, Middle East, Geopolitics.
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