*The Middle East is the home of some of the world's oldest civilisations, and birthplace of three of the world's major religions.

*Israel was the traditional homeland of the Jewish people, who are both a religious and an ethnic group.  They had a number of problems with the Roman Empire, but one of the most significant was that Judaism is strictly monotheistic, and the Romans were polytheistic.  Among other things, the Roman Empire required the worship of its gods (including some of its emperors), and the Jews would not do that.  The Jews also complained of excessive taxation.  Eventually the Jews revolted too often (including three major revolts between 66 AD (the Temple was destroyed in 70 AD) and 135 AD, and they were expelled from Israel.  However, they maintained their religion, and it spread around the world.

*Israel was also the birthplace of Christianity, derived from the teachings of a Jewish teacher named Jesus, whose followers believe him to be the Son of God.  He was put to death by the Romans about 30 AD, but rose from the dead and ascended to heaven.  It is taught that believing in him and following his teachings will save mankind from sin and allow everlasting life in heaven.  However, the early Christians (initially seen as a heretical sect of Judaism) also opposed Roman rule, and were persecuted throughout their early history as anti-social deviants.  However, the Roman Empire’s vast system of roads and other infrastructure also allowed Christianity to spread, and it was eventually made the official religion of Rome.

*Although the Roman Empire fell in the east in 476 (and parts of North Africa were taken over by the Vandals), the eastern Empire survived until 29 May 1453.  It ruled over Anatolia and most of the near Middle East for centuries, during which it fought with the Persian Empire, and later with Arabs and Turks who had been moved by a new religion that they meant to spread, by force if necessary.

*In 610 AD, an Arab merchant named Muhammad living in the city of Mecca claimed to receive a message from an angel of God who told him to tell people to turn from sin and worship one god (in those days most Arabs were polytheistic).  He claimed that this was not a new religion, but an old, true religion, which the Jews and Christians had known, but not gotten quite right (although Muhammad taught that these ‘people of the Book’ ought to be respected for their beliefs, too).  He recognised most of the Jewish and Christian prophets and teachers, but taught that Jesus was a prophet, not the Son of God, who, to the Moslems (as Muhammad’s followers came to be known) is called Allah.

*Muhammad was not well-received in Mecca, so he fled to Medina in 622, which is now the first year of the Moslem calendar.  Medina and Mecca went to war over Muhammad’s teachings, and Muhammad built such a large army of followers that in the end Mecca capitulated without a fight. 

*Islam’s holy book is the Koran (or Quran), and it requires five duties:  professing faith in Allah and Muhammad, praying five times a day, helping the poor and needy, fasting during Ramadan (the 9th month of the Islamic lunar calendar), and making a pilgrimage to Mecca.

*By 632, the year of Muhammad’s death, most of the Arabian Peninsula had been conquered by his followers, and afterwards his successors carried the jihad to the rest of the Middle East, fighting the Persian Empire and the Roman Empire and anyone else who stood in their way.

*However, in 656, there was a dispute over who ought to be Caliph, as the leader of Islam was known.  Islam fell into civil war over this, and eventually split into three major factions, the Sunni (maybe 90%), the Shi’a (supposedly 9%, but probably more), and the Ibadi (mostly practised in Oman)).

*By the 800s, Islam had spread to most of North Africa, Persia, and parts of central Asia (and, indeed, had taken all of the Iberian Peninsula, too).  It would later spread to Indonesia and the Philippines and parts of Sub-Saharan Africa as well.

*In central Asia, many Turkic peoples converted to Islam, among them the Ottoman Turks, who eventually conquered the Eastern Roman Empire in 1453, renaming its capital Istanbul (and for a time claiming to be the successors of the Roman Empire).

*Europe tried to prevent this, and launched the Crusades in 1095, taking back parts of the Holy Land, but eventually losing it all by 1291.

*Eventually most of the Middle East was ruled by one of three Islamic Empires, the Ottoman Empire (Turks ruling over Arabs) in most of the Middle East and North Africa, the Persian Empire in modern Iran, and the Mogul Empire in modern India and Pakistan.

*Today the only non-Moslem nations in the Middle East are Armenia and Georgia in the Caucasus mountains, and the recently-re-established Israel.

*The Moslem world encouraged science, arts, and literature, and in many ways was more civilised that contemporary Europe, still emerging from its dark ages.  However, Western Europe would begin to surpass the Islamic world in the 1400s, and by the late 1800s and early 1900s would be far ahead of it, partly because the Middle East lacked the timber, coal, and other resources that allowed Europe to have the industrial revolution.

*By the 1800s, the Ottoman Empire was known as the Sick Man of Europe, because the power of the Sublime Porte was so weak.  He ruled through a series of local governors, often called Beys, who typically did as they pleased in most ways.

*Along the coast of North Africa, in what were known as the Barbary States, the local rulers made most of their money from piracy, or from protection rackets that preyed on shipping in the Mediterranean.  Most European nations were willing to pay fees every year for safe passage, but in 1801, Thomas Jefferson refused to pay the Dey of Algiers a tribute of $225,000.  Another American of the time, Charles Pinckney, said ‘millions of defence, but not one cent for tribute.’  This began the First Barbary War, which lasted until 1805.  In it, America fought Algiers, Tunis, and Tripoli (and according to some sources, Morocco, but this seems unlikely, as the US and Morocco share the oldest unbroken friendship treaty held by the US (held since 1777)).  In 1805, the US Marines captured the city of Dema, owned by the Pasha of Tripoli, who asked for peace.  In the end, the war was sort of a draw, because the US still paid ransoms for captured soldiers, and would sometimes find their ships taken captive by Algiers and other Barbary States until the Second Barbary War of 1815, which was an American victory.  One of America’s heroes of both Wars was Commodore Stephen Decatur.  The next year, the English and the Dutch bombarded Algiers, and by 1830, most of the Barbary States were French protectorates, although Libya would remain part of the Ottoman Empire until its conquest by Italy in 1912.

*The struggle for European dominance of the Middle East came closer to home for the Ottomans in the 1850s.  Napoleon III forced the Sultan to recognise France as the official protector of Christians and Christian holy sites in the Holy Land, a right the Tsars of Russia had held since the mid-1700s.  Tsar Nicholas I complained, and Napoleon III sent a warship into the Black Sea.  In response, Russia sent troops to the Danube River, where Roumanians wanted independence from Ottoman Rule (but did not want Russian rule, either).

*In 1853, the Ottoman Empire declared war on Russia, despite the efforts of Europe's other great powers to create peace.  Once war had begun, however, the British, French, and Sardinians (who wanted British and French support for their efforts to unify Italy under their king) allied with the Turks against the Russians (who did have some help from Balkan nationalists, but who expected help from Austria after Russia helped the Hapsburgs put down the Revolutions of 1848—because Austria snubbed both sides, it had no friends when the Seven Weeks War began).

*Russia soon withdrew from the Danubian principalities, thus removing the original cause of the war, but the Allies soon landed troops in the Crimean Peninsula, which is usually viewed as the beginning of the Crimean War (1854-1856).  The Crimean Peninsula was the base of the Tsar's Black Sea fleet, and thus a threat to European shipping in the Mediterranean.

*The Crimean War's primary campaign was the Siege of Sevastopol, which lasted from September 1854 to September 1855.  After the city was captured, some of its cannon were taken the the UK as trophies of war, and some were melted down to make the first Victoria Crosses.  One of Russia's efforts to break the siege led to the Battle of Balaclava, where the Russians were defeated by a Thin Red Line of British infantry, and the poorly planned Charges of the Light Brigade and the Heavy Brigade.

*The Russians lost the Crimean War, despite many mistakes on the part of the Allies.  This was the first major war to be photographed (thus carrying the horrors of war back home), the first to widely use the telegraph, and the first to recognise the contributions of women nurses (most famously Florence Nightingale).

*Russia's threat to Mediterranean shipping was important, because while the Crimean War was being fought, a French entrepreneur obtained permission to build a canal linking the Mediterranean Sea with the Red Sea (and thus the Indian Ocean).  The Canal, jointly controlled by Egypt (nominally part of the Ottoman Empire) and French investors opened in 1869.  However, Egypt soon went into debt, and in 1875 the British government under Disraeli bought out Egypt's shares.  Later, the British would occupy the area around the Canal and use this power to dominate Egypt, making it (along with Soudan) a British protectorate in 1882.

*European nationalism undermined the Ottoman Empire in the Balkans.  Greece won its independence in 1829.  Between 1875 and 1878, Moldova, Wallachia (part of Romania), Serbia, Montenegro, and Bulgaria gained their independence, Cyprus was lent to the British, and Bosnia was annexed to the Austro-Hungarian Empire.  In 1912 Albania declared its independence.  The mixture of Moslem and Christian cultures left behind in these areas would lead to conflicts that have not yet ended.

*Throughout the 1800s and early 1900s, the Ottoman Empire also suffered from nationalism in the Middle East, as the various Arab peoples ruled by the Ottoman Turks began to desire more and more independence.

*During WWI, the Ottoman Empire sided with the Central Powers, and found that the Allies did their best to promote rebellion among their various subjects.  After the end of WWI most of the Ottoman Empire except for what is now Turkey had become a series of independent kingdoms or other states under British and French protection or as part of the newly united Kingdom of Saudi Arabia under the house of Saud and Wahhabist Sunni Islamic leaders.

*One nation that did not become independent was that of the Kurds of the Ottoman Empire.  They had been persecuted by the Turks, and even today, it is illegal to speak of Kurdish nationalism in Turkey (the Kurdish language only became legal in 1991, although Kurds compose 20% of the Turkish population). The Kurds were not the only group that was persecuted; the Armenians, a Christian group in the Ottoman Empire, were too.

*The Armenians had been persecuted before, perhaps 100,000-300,000 between 1894 and 1897 when the previously loyal Armenians began seeking a nation-state.  However, between 1914 and 1923 several hundred thousand or even 1.5 million Armenians may have been killed, many of them in concentration camps.  Supposedly this was an inspiration for Adolph Hitler.

*Shortly after the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire, the last Sultan of the Ottoman Empire was overthrown and the Republic of Turkey was formed under the leadership of Kemal Atatürk, who began a programme of westernisation, in which Friday became a business day, Arabic script was replaced by the Latin alphabet, and the fez was outlawed.

*As the British and the French divided up the remains of the Ottoman Empire, the Middle East was primarily valued as a link between Europe and South Asia, but as the twentieth century progressed, it would gain increasing prominence due to its reserves of oil.