The Middle East Caption

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This is not a history,  nor a travel guide, but a reminder of what most people would more or less know or surmise about the Middle East.

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This Wikipedia map shows the different meanings of “Middle East”: a traditional meaning, a definition made by the G8, and a de facto meaning widely used.

The term was probably launched by the British Foreign Office, where China or Japan were “the Far East”.

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The languages of the Middle East

This is a thumbnail of a large and very detailed map at http://www.essex.ac.uk/larg/resources/case-law.aspx. As you can see even on this small version, mapping the languages of that region is complicated.

On most other maps it looks like Arabic is the only language all over and deep into Africa.

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The two great rivers, Tigris and  Euphrates, define the region called The Fertile Crescent.
This map is from “Who you call a skeptic” at http://whoyoucallingaskeptic.wordpress.com/2009/05/10/planet-x/

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Crescent means the same as croissant and is a curved shape like that of the moon

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Iraq  has had many different names, and even Churchill thought that it was at times confusing.

Besides Fertile Crescent, it is also known as the cradle of civilization and as Mesopotamia meaning the Land between the rivers.

It is where Abraham came from.

Now its capital is Baghdad.

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The people of Mesopotamia probably invented writing  and the wheel some 6000 years ago, and they  were going to build the world’s first skyscraper:

Brueghel’s famous Tower of Babel. Notice the stone masons kneeling or even praying to the visiting king. Those were hard times.

There are several versions by Brueghel (as there is also more than one Brueghel and they are not easy to keep apart.) But other great painters did the same theme. Here is Lucas van Valckenborch:

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Valckenborch’s tower is in public domain at http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/83/Tour_de_babel.jpeg.

and from Meister der Weltchronik, the Masters of World News, you will find this at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tower_of_Babel:

See on the right in the air the stone being lifted? Even in  Roman aqueducts you’d still see the holes made to lift the stones with this device:

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Baghdad on the Tigris.

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Egypt : the Pyramids : each the tomb of a ruler and certainly the world’s most famous buildings. And how many theories about how they were built?

On the enlarged photo  you can see the true size of the blocks if you compare them to the horses standing in their shade.

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Egypt : the Nile.

Western history’s most famous river flooded every year and so fertilized their land 5000 years ago.

It taught them geometry, the science needed to build those pyramids, because after each flood they had to restore their land holdings.

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This is the name of the river as it would have been written in the Pharaoh’s time: Iteru.

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Mosques everywhere. The Blue Mosque of Sultan Ahmed is in Turkey.

From those high slender towers the people are called to pray. Their religion, Islam, is based on a book called the Koran, and they know large parts of it by heart and decorate even their living room walls with its verses.

Islam is a relatively young religion. It spread strongly in its beginning:

Mecca is its center:

This photo from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Kaaba_mirror_edit_jj.jpgs by Muhammad Mahdi Karim is under the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 only.

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Iran : it is Persia. This is where Scheherazade was from. Its civilization dates back to 4000 bC.

The king had been deceived by his wife, and he was going to take revenge on all women everywhere, get a new one every evening and kill her in the morning. Sheherazade volunteered to be the next in line. She told the king a story and promised to tell him another one the next night, and then another. This is how she kept herself alive for 1001 nights until he married her.

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There is a famous little piece of parlour music called “In a Persian Market”, a small MIDI file, about 29 kb, to portray the fairy tale charm of those regions and to imitate their music.

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Jerusalem : the Temple Mount. Its history of about 3,000 years is rooted in Judaism and extended later into Christianity and Islam.

Below is  Jerusalem seen from the Mount of Olives. There is a 9 Mega original  at Wikipedia.

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Israel  is the origin of three world religions.

The sea of Galilee, famous from the Bible for its fishermen, the first missionaries of Christianity.

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The Mosque in Mazar-e Sharif is the tomb of one of the Prophet’s cousins. It is in Afghanistan.

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The stories of Nasreddin came from the same region as those of 1001 Nights and later traveled east to India and China and finally all over the world.

http://www.readliterature.com/hodjastories.htm

- Nasreddin, we need a donkey for a few hours. Could I take yours?
- I would gladly lend you my donkey, said Nasreddin, but he is not here.
Just at that moment the donkey brayed in his shed.
- Shame on you, Nasreddin, said the neighbour, you are caught in a lie, your donkey is braying in his shed.
-It is you who ought to feel ashamed, answered  Nasreddin. Do you believe a donkey rather than your neighbour?

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And there are camels and dromedaries who are sometimes called the ships of the desert, because in many places the deserts look like the sea.

from http://www.wallpaper-z.com/animals/1403/white-camel.html but I am not sure it is in public domain

There is something mysterious about the nature of  camels, something humble and haughty at the same time in their faces.  There are also two by Klee:

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This is a desert, and there are flowers, and barely visible in the distance there are snow capped mountains, because deserts are not all alike and do not all have the same origin. –

However, this desert is in fact in the United States. In the Middle East some deserts are just as beautiful, but this was the most eloquent photo.

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This is what the camel’s feet look like to help him walk on the sand of the desert. But the Arabs are also famous for their horses.

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The market in Cairo. There are great photos of Cairo at http://tinyurl.com/nrdcup and there was a photo of downtown Cairo  at Wikipedia:

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The streets of Cairo from a useful blog at http://thecityfix.com/2007/11/

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This is what their houses look like. Since it does not rain much, instead of a roof you have a terrace where you sit and talk in the evening.

From a roof like this King David would have watched Bathsheba. It is an architect’s model.

Another model of a house, 7 000 years old they say:

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Their carpets, sometimes seen flying with important people on board….

and their olive  trees :

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>>>>> Over to Where is the land of Uz?

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