I.  Geography


     Desert/bedouin

     peasant majority -- Nile & Tigris-Euphrates river valleys,

          Fertile Crescent

     centrality of urban centers: Istanbul, Cairo, Damascus,

          Baghdad, Basra, Tehran, Tel Aviv

II. Ethnography 
        

     Arabs 

     Iranians

     Turks

     Jews

     Armenians -- Turkey, now USSR, Syria, Jerusalem

     Greeks -- until population transfer of 1922-24

     Berbers -- Morocco, Algeria

     Kurds -- Iraq, Iran, Turkey, Syria

III. Islam 

     sunnis -- majority

     shi`a -- majority in Iran, S. Iraq, 

          S. Lebanon, northern Yemen

     extreme shi`a -- Druze, Alawis

IV. Conceptualizing the Middle East



     From the Ottoman Empire and Qajar Iran to nation-states



     1) New forms of accumulating economic surplus: capitalist 

          agriculture; oil; large-scale modern industry



     2) New social classes and strata: secular, Western-style,

          intelligentsia; industrialists and financial

          entrepreneurs; urban workers



     3) Changes in gender relations



     4) Euro-American great powers: colonial rivalry and Cold War



     5) Reconfiguring identity: local patriotism, Arab

          nationalism, Islamism

Cairo
Istanbul
Sahara Desert
Southern Iraq