Middle East in the context of Gilles Kepel

The Near East (Arabic: الشرق الأدنى) is a transcontinental region around the Eastern Mediterranean encompassing the historical Fertile Crescent, the Levant, Anatolia, Egypt, the Balkans, Mesopotamia, and coastal areas of the Arabian Peninsula. The term was invented in the 20th century by modern Western geographers and was originally applied to the Ottoman Empire, but today has varying definitions within different academic circles. The term Near East was used in conjunction with the Middle East and the Far East (China and beyond), together known as the "three Easts"; it was a separate term from the Middle East during earlier times and official British usage. As of 2024, both terms are used interchangeably by politicians and news reporters to refer to the same region. Near East and Middle East are both Eurocentric terms.

According to the National Geographic Society, the terms Near East and Middle East denote the same territories and are "generally accepted as comprising the countries of the Arabian Peninsula, Cyprus, Egypt, Iraq, Iran, Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Palestinian territories, Syria, and Turkey". Also, Afghanistan is often included.

The Levant (/ləˈvænt/ lə-VANT, US also /ləˈvɑːnt/ lə-VAHNT) is a subregion of West Asia along the Eastern Mediterranean, that forms part of the Middle East. The term is often used in conjunction with historical or cultural references.

In its narrowest sense, used in archaeology and other contexts, the Levant refers to Cyprus and land bordering the Mediterranean Sea in West Asia that includes the Syria region, Lebanon, Jordan, Palestine, Israel, and south Cilicia (Turkey). In its widest historical sense, the Levant included all the Eastern Mediterranean; extending from Greece to Egypt and Cyrenaica (Eastern Libya). The Levant represents the land bridge between Africa and Eurasia, has been described as the crossroads of West Asia, Eastern Mediterranean, and Northeast Africa, and geologically as the "northwest of the Arabian plate".

Mesopotamia is a historical region of West Asia situated within the Tigris–Euphrates river system, in the northern part of the Fertile Crescent. It corresponds roughly to the territory of modern Iraq and forms the eastern geographic boundary of the modern Middle East. Just beyond it lies southwestern Iran, where the region transitions into the Persian plateau, marking the shift from the Arab world to Iran. In the broader sense, the historical region of Mesopotamia also includes parts of present-day Iran (southwest), Turkey (southeast), Syria (northeast), and Kuwait.

Mesopotamia is the site of the earliest developments of the Neolithic Revolution from around 10,000 BC. It has been identified as having "inspired some of the most important developments in human history, including the invention of the wheel, the planting of the first cereal crops, the development of cursive script, mathematics, astronomy, and agriculture". It is recognised as the cradle of some of the world's earliest civilizations.

West Asia (also called Western Asia or Southwest Asia) is the westernmost region of Asia. As defined by most academics, UN bodies and other institutions, the subregion consists of Anatolia, the Arabian Peninsula, Iran, Mesopotamia, the Armenian highlands, the Levant, the island of Cyprus, the Sinai Peninsula and the South Caucasus. The region is separated from Africa by the Isthmus of Suez in Egypt, and separated from Europe by the waterways of the Turkish Straits and the watershed of the Greater Caucasus. Central Asia lies to its northeast, while South Asia lies to its east. Twelve seas surround the region (clockwise): the Aegean Sea, the Sea of Marmara, the Black Sea, the Caspian Sea, the Persian Gulf, the Gulf of Oman, the Arabian Sea, the Gulf of Aden, the Red Sea, the Gulf of Aqaba, the Gulf of Suez, and the Mediterranean Sea. West Asia contains the majority of the similarly defined Middle East. The Middle East is a political term invented by Western geographers that has historically included various territories depending on political and historical context, while West Asia is a geographical term with more accuracy and consistency. It excludes most of Egypt and the northwestern part of Turkey, and includes the southern part of the Caucasus.

West Asia covers an area of 5,994,935 km (2,314,657 sq mi), with a population of about 313 million. Of the 20 UN member countries fully or partly within the region, 13 are part of the Arab world. The most populous countries in West Asia are Iran, Turkey, Iraq, Saudi Arabia and Yemen.

The Ottoman Empire, also known as the Turkish Empire, controlled much of Southeast Europe, West Asia, and North Africa from the 14th century to the early 20th century. It also controlled parts of southeastern Central Europe between the early 16th and early 18th centuries.

The empire emerged from a beylik, or principality, founded in northwestern Anatolia in c. 1299 by the Turkoman tribal leader Osman I. His successors conquered much of Anatolia and expanded into the Balkans by the mid-14th century, transforming their petty kingdom into a transcontinental empire. The Ottomans ended the Byzantine Empire with the conquest of Constantinople in 1453 by Mehmed II. With its capital at Constantinople and control over a significant portion of the Mediterranean Basin, the Ottoman Empire was at the centre of interactions between the Middle East and Europe for six centuries. Ruling over so many peoples, the empire granted varying levels of autonomy to its many confessional communities, or millets, to manage their own affairs per Islamic law. During the reigns of Selim I and Suleiman the Magnificent in the 16th century, the Ottoman Empire became a global power.

Iraq, officially the Republic of Iraq, is a country in West Asia. Located within the geo-political region of the Middle East, it is bordered by Saudi Arabia to the south, Turkey to the north, Iran to the east, the Persian Gulf and Kuwait to the southeast, Jordan to the southwest, and Syria to the west. The country covers an area of 438,317 square kilometres (169,235 sq mi) and has a population of over 46 million, making it the 58th largest country by area and the 31st most populous in the world. Baghdad, home to over 8 million people, is the capital city and the largest in the country.

Starting in the 6th millennium BC, the fertile plains between Iraq's Tigris and Euphrates rivers, referred to as Mesopotamia, fostered the rise of early cities, civilisations, and empires including Sumer, Akkad, Babylonia, and Assyria. Known as the cradle of civilisation, Mesopotamia saw the invention of writing systems, mathematics, navigation, timekeeping, a calendar, astrology, the wheel, the sailboat, and a law code. After the Muslim conquest of Mesopotamia, Baghdad became the capital of the Abbasid Caliphate and a global cultural and intellectual hub during the Islamic Golden Age, home to institutions such as the House of Wisdom. Following Baghdad's destruction by the Mongols in 1258, Iraq came under successive empires and, from the 16th century until the 20th century, was governed within the Ottoman system as a defined region known administratively as ‘the Iraq Region’. Additionally, Iraq holds religious significance in Christianity, Judaism, Yazidism, and Mandaeism.

Turks (Turkish: Türkler), or Turkish people, are the largest Turkic ethnic group, comprising the majority of the population of Turkey and Northern Cyprus. They generally speak the various Turkish dialects. In addition, centuries-old ethnic Turkish communities still exist across other former territories of the Ottoman Empire. Article 66 of the Constitution of Turkey defines a Turk as anyone who is a citizen of the Turkish state. While the legal use of the term Turkish as it pertains to a citizen of Turkey is different from the term's ethnic definition, the majority of the Turkish population (an estimated 70 to 75 percent) are of Turkish ethnicity. The vast majority of Turks are Sunni Muslims, with a notable minority practicing Alevism.

The ethnic Turks can therefore be distinguished by a number of cultural and regional variants, but do not function as separate ethnic groups. In particular, the culture of the Anatolian Turks in Asia Minor has underlain and influenced the Turkish nationalist ideology. Other Turkish groups include the Rumelian Turks (also referred to as Balkan Turks) historically located in the Balkans; Turkish Cypriots on the island of Cyprus, Meskhetian Turks originally based in Meskheti, Georgia; and ethnic Turkish people across the Middle East, where they are also called Turkmen or Turkoman in the Levant (e.g. Iraqi Turkmen, Syrian Turkmen, Lebanese Turkmen, etc.). Consequently, the Turks form the largest minority group in Bulgaria, the second largest minority group in Iraq, Libya, North Macedonia, and Syria, and the third largest minority group in Kosovo. They also form substantial communities in the Western Thrace region of Greece, the Dobruja region of Romania, the Akkar region in Lebanon, as well as minority groups in other post-Ottoman Balkan and Middle Eastern countries. The mass immigration of Turks also led to them forming the largest ethnic minority group in Austria, Denmark, Germany, and the Netherlands. There are also Turkish communities in other parts of Europe as well as in North America, Australia and the Post-Soviet states. Turks are the 13th largest ethnic group in the world.

The rise of the Ottoman Empire is a period of history that started with the emergence of the Ottoman principality (Turkish: Osmanlı Beyliği) in c. 1299, and ended c. 1453. This period witnessed the foundation of a political entity ruled by the Ottoman Dynasty in the northwestern Anatolian region of Bithynia, and its transformation from a small principality on the Byzantine frontier into an empire spanning the Balkans, Caucasus, Anatolia, Middle East and North Africa. For this reason, this period in the empire's history has been described as the "Proto-Imperial Era". Throughout most of this period, the Ottomans were merely one of many competing states in the region, and relied upon the support of local warlords (Ghazis) and vassals (Beys) to maintain control over their realm. By the middle of the fifteenth century the Ottoman sultans were able to accumulate enough personal power and authority to establish a centralized imperial state, a process which was achieved by Sultan Mehmed II (r. 1451–1481– ). The conquest of Constantinople in 1453 is seen as the symbolic moment when the emerging Ottoman state shifted from a mere principality into an empire therefore marking a major turning point in its history.

The causes of Ottoman success cannot be attributed to any single factor, and they varied throughout the period as the Ottomans continually adapted to changing circumstances.

The ancient Near East was home to many cradles of civilization, spanning Mesopotamia, the Levant,, Egypt, Iran, Anatolia and the Armenian highlands, and the Arabian Peninsula. As such, the fields of ancient Near East studies and Near Eastern archaeology are one of the most prominent with regard to research in the realm of ancient history. Historically, the Near East denoted an area roughly encompassing the centre of West Asia, having been focused on the lands between Greece and Egypt in the west and Iran in the east. It therefore largely corresponds with the modern-day geopolitical concept of the Middle East.

The history of the ancient Near East begins with the rise of Sumer in the 4th millennium BC, though the date that it ends is a subject of debate among scholars; the term covers the region's developments in the Bronze Age and the Iron Age, and is variously considered to end with either the establishment of the Achaemenid Empire in the 6th century BC, the establishment of the Macedonian Empire in the 4th century BC, or the beginning of the early Muslim conquests in the 7th century AD.

The Fertile Crescent (Arabic: الهلال الخصيب al-hilāl al-ḵaṣīb) is a crescent-shaped region in the Middle East, spanning modern-day Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Palestine, and Syria, together with northern Kuwait, south-eastern Turkey, and western Iran. Some authors also include Cyprus and northern Egypt.

The Fertile Crescent is believed to be the first region where settled farming emerged as people started the process of clearance and modification of natural vegetation to grow newly domesticated plants as crops. Early human civilizations such as Sumer in Mesopotamia flourished as a result. Technological advances in the region include the development of agriculture and the use of irrigation, of writing, the wheel, and glass, most emerging first in Mesopotamia.

The Far East is the geographical region that encompasses the easternmost portion of the Asian continent, including North, East and Southeast Asia. South Asia is sometimes also included in the definition of the term. In modern times, the term Far East has widely fallen out of use and been substituted by Asia–Pacific, while the terms Middle East and Near East, although now pertaining to different territories, are still commonly used today.

The term first came into use in European geopolitical discourse in the 15th century, particularly the British, denoting the Far East as the "farthest" of the three "Easts", beyond the Near East and the Middle East. Likewise, during the Qing dynasty of the 19th and early 20th centuries, the term "Tàixī (泰西)" – i.e., anything further west than the Arab world – was used to refer to the Western countries.

The Middle East, or the Near East, was one of the cradles of civilization: after the Neolithic Revolution and the adoption of agriculture, many of the world's oldest cultures and civilizations were created there. Since ancient times, the Middle East has had several lingua franca: Akkadian, Hebrew, Aramaic, Greek, and Arabic. The Sumerians, around the 5th millennium BC, were among the first to develop a civilization. By 3150 BC, Egyptian civilization unified under its first pharaoh. Mesopotamia hosted powerful empires, notably Assyria which lasted for 1,500 years. For centuries after the 7th century BC, the region was dominated by Persian powers like the Achaemenid Empire.

In the 1st century BC, the Roman Republic conquered most of the region, and its successor, the Roman Empire, that ruled from the 6th to 15th centuries AD referred to as the Byzantine Empire, grew significantly more. Roman pagan religions were replaced by Christianity in the 4th century AD. From the 3rd to 7th centuries, Rome ruled alongside the Sasanian Empire. From the 7th century, Islam spread rapidly, expanding Arab identity in the region. The Seljuk dynasty displaced Arab dominance in the 11th century, followed by the Mongol Empire in the 13th century.

The Black Death was a bubonic plague pandemic that occurred in Europe from 1346 to 1353. It was one of the most fatal pandemics in human history; as many as 50 million people perished, perhaps 50% of Europe's 14th-century population. The disease is caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis and spread by fleas and through the air. One of the most significant events in European history, the Black Death had far-reaching population, economic, and cultural impacts. It was the beginning of the second plague pandemic. The plague created religious, social and economic upheavals, with profound effects on the course of European history.

The origin of the Black Death is disputed. Genetic analysis suggests Yersinia pestis bacteria evolved approximately 7,000 years ago, at the beginning of the Neolithic, with flea-mediated strains emerging around 3,800 years ago during the late Bronze Age. The immediate territorial origins of the Black Death and its outbreak remain unclear, with some evidence pointing towards Central Asia, China, the Middle East, and Europe. The pandemic was reportedly first introduced to Europe during the siege of the Genoese trading port of Kaffa in Crimea by the Golden Horde army of Jani Beg in 1347. From Crimea, it was most likely carried by fleas living on the black rats that travelled on Genoese ships, spreading through the Mediterranean Basin and reaching North Africa, West Asia, and the rest of Europe via Constantinople, Sicily, and the Italian Peninsula. There is evidence that once it came ashore, the Black Death mainly spread from person-to-person as pneumonic plague, thus explaining the quick inland spread of the epidemic, which was faster than would be expected if the primary vector was rat fleas causing bubonic plague. In 2022, it was discovered that there was a sudden surge of deaths in what is today Kyrgyzstan from the Black Death in the late 1330s; when combined with genetic evidence, this implies that the initial spread may have pre-dated, by nearly two decades, the 14th-century Mongol conquests previously postulated as the cause.

Akrotiri and Dhekelia (/ˌækroʊˈtɪəri ənd diˈkeɪliə/), officially the Sovereign Base Areas of Akrotiri and Dhekelia (SBA), is a British Overseas Territory that consists of two separate areas on the island of Cyprus. The areas, which include British military bases and installations that were formerly part of the Crown colony of Cyprus, were retained by the British under the 1960 treaty of independence signed by the United Kingdom, Greece, Turkey, the President of Cyprus and the representative of the Turkish Cypriot community. The territory serves as a station for signals intelligence and is thereby part of the United Kingdom's surveillance-gathering work in the Mediterranean and the Middle East.

Despite being under British control, Akrotiri and Dhekelia are integrated with the surrounding Cypriot communities and economies. The areas are notable for their strategic geopolitical value and rich environmental features, including the Akrotiri Salt Lake, a protected wetland. Education, policing, and healthcare services are provided in coordination with the Republic of Cyprus. The SBAs also play a significant role in intelligence and communications operations across the Eastern Mediterranean. Although not part of the European Union post-Brexit, the areas continue to be governed by protocols that align with certain EU laws to avoid disrupting the daily lives of residents.

In world history, post-classical history refers to the period from about 500 CE to about 1450 or 1500 CE, roughly corresponding to the European Middle Ages following the decline of the western Roman Empire. The post-classical period is characterized by the expansion of certain civilizations geographically, by ongoing wars fought over land, resources and religion, and by the development of trade networks between often-distant civilizations. This period is also called—with various implications and emphases—the medieval era, the post-antiquity era, the post-ancient era, or the pre-modern era.

In Asia and the Middle East during this time, the spread of Islam helped produce a series of caliphates which fostered the Islamic Golden Age, leading to advances in science and greater trade between those in the Asian, African, and European continents. East Asia experienced the entrenchment of the power of a unitary and Imperial China, the dynastic governance and culture of which influenced Japan, Korea and Vietnam. Religions such as Buddhism and neo-Confucianism spread in the region, while Christianity became entrenched in Europe and increasingly elsewhere. Gunpowder was developed in China during the post-classical era. The Mongol Empire conquered and controlled much of Europe and Asia, permitting more trade and cultural and intellectual exchange between the two regions.

A botanical name is a formal scientific name conforming to the International Code of Nomenclature for algae, fungi, and plants (ICN) and, if it concerns a plant cultigen, the additional cultivar or Group epithets must conform to the International Code of Nomenclature for Cultivated Plants (ICNCP). The code of nomenclature covers "all organisms traditionally treated as algae, fungi, or plants, whether fossil or non-fossil, including blue-green algae (Cyanobacteria), chytrids, oomycetes, slime moulds and photosynthetic protists with their taxonomically related non-photosynthetic groups (but excluding Microsporidia)."

The purpose of a formal name is to have a single name that is accepted and used worldwide for a particular plant or plant group. For example, the botanical name Bellis perennis denotes a plant species which is native to most of the countries of Europe and the Middle East, where it has accumulated various names in many languages. Later, the plant was introduced worldwide, bringing it into contact with more languages. English names for this plant species include: daisy, English daisy, and lawn daisy. The cultivar Bellis perennis 'Aucubifolia' is a golden-variegated horticultural selection of this species.

The Northwest Caucasian languages, also called West Caucasian, Abkhazo–Adyghean, Abkhazo–Circassian, Circassic, or sometimes Pontic languages (from Ancient Greek, pontos, referring to the Black Sea, in contrast to the Northeast Caucasian languages as the Caspian languages), is a family of languages spoken in the northwestern Caucasus region, chiefly in three Russian republics (Adygea, Kabardino-Balkaria, Karachay-Cherkessia), the disputed territory of Abkhazia, Georgia, and Turkey, with smaller communities scattered throughout the Middle East.

The group's relationship to any other language family is uncertain and unproven. One language, Ubykh, became extinct in 1992, while all of the other languages are in some form of endangerment, with UNESCO classifying all as either "vulnerable", "endangered", or "severely endangered". Within the Northwest Caucasian languages, only Abkhaz has a first-set code in the ISO 639 standard.

The Northeast Caucasian languages, also called East Caucasian, Nakh-Daghestani or Vainakh-Daghestani, or sometimes Caspian languages (from the Caspian Sea, in contrast to Pontic languages for the Northwest Caucasian languages), is a family of languages spoken in the Russian republics of Dagestan, Chechnya and Ingushetia and in Northern Azerbaijan as well as in Georgia and diaspora populations in Western Europe and the Middle East. According to Glottolog, there are currently 36 Nakh-Dagestanian languages.