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History of the Middle East
Located at the juncture of Asia, Africa and Europe, the Middle East has been one of the centers of ancient civilization. Today it continues its historic significance as it provides much of the world's energy through its oil resources.
5,104 Questions
How did the Umayyads' treatment of non-Muslims and non-Arabs affect their empire?
Dhimmi (Non-Muslims)
The Dhimmi, or non-Muslim under Muslim occupation was required during the Umayyad Period to pay a number of taxes that were connected with his Dhimmi status. The most famous was the jizya, which was a tax that Dhimmi had to pay for Muslims for the right to not be killed where they stood for not acknowledging Mohammed's Prophecy; it was a form of humiliation. Additional taxes included the kharaj, which was a tax on non-Muslim land-holdings in the Muslim World. The kharaj was so untenable that most Dhimmi were forced to live in the cities where the tax would not be applicable. On paper, a Christian or Jew could testify against a Muslim, but in reality, such testimony was not acceptable and the attempt to defame a Muslim would receive retribution. Christians and Jews were not allowed to build new houses of worship, restore old houses of worship, proselytize in any way (this included religious debate or dialogue), or allow wine or pigs to be shown in public.
Mawali (Non-Arab Muslims)
Mawali were traditionally excluded from political and social affairs. The Umayyad in particular treated them as second-class Muslims. The evidence of this treatment was that Mawali were not allowed to have many government positions and that they were taxed whereas Arab Muslims were not taxed at all. Mawali made up an important component of the Umayyad Caliphate, especially Persians. Persia was always a high seat of culture in the Islamic Empire. As a result, ideas moved quite freely throughout Persia and Persians considered themselves to be of equal worth to Arabs.
Result
Since they treated both rather horrendously, it is not surprising that the Umayyad Caliphate fell around 100 years after its foundation due to internal strife and localized rebellion. However, most of the rebellion came out of Persian and Moroccan Mawalis who were angered over their disenfranchisement rather than the Dhimmi who did not wish to receive retribution for offending Muslims.
What portion of the population in Israel and the Palestinian territories is Jewish Arab?
As concerns "Jewish Arabs":
It is important to note, before answering the question, that the people you are referring to are not considered to be "Jewish Arabs" by either Arabs or Jews or themselves. They are typically referred to as "Jews from Arab countries", "Mizrahi Jews", "Mizrahim", or "Sephardi Jews". Many Jews consider the term Jewish Arab offensive because the Jews were in much of the Middle East and North Africa long before the Arabs arrived and did not intermarry with them to a large degree, making them Un-Arabized (as opposed to the remaining indigenous population which did experience this). Therefore, they are not Arabs of Jewish faith, but Jews who happened to grow up in Arab countries.
As concerns Israel:
Racial Jewish demographics are always hard to do in Israel because there is a huge push in Israel for Jews from all different walks of life to intermarry and create a United Sabra Culture. (Sabra is the term for Israeli Cultural Judaism). Mizrahim first came to Israel in the "Exodus Wave" which occurred from 1950-1952. During that period, between 450,000 and 550,000 Mizrahim left the Arab World and came to Israel, with the largest communities leaving from Iraq and Morocco. Israel had, prior to that point, a population of around 600,000. This made the Mizrahim a very large percentage of Israelis.
During the 1960s, the Israeli Religious Population was relatively small and Mizrahim reproduced at a slightly higher rate than Ashkenazim which led to Mizrahim being the largest Jewish community from that period until the 1990s when a mass of Russian Jews shifted the balance back to Ashkenazim being the Jewish majority. However, it is also important to note that the children of the Mizrahim born in Israel in the 1960s and 1970s began to intermarry with the Ashkenazim, leading to many in Israel having mixed heritage. (For example, one-quarter of Israelis claim Moroccan heritage, but only one-fifth claim it from both sides, representing a difference of 250,000 people)
The best estimate today of the Mizrahi Jewish population in Israel would be around 2 million individuals.
As concerns the Palestinian Territories:
There used to be a relatively sizable Mizrahi Jewish population in what would become the Palestinian Territories in the early 1900s (prior to the increase brought on by the Mandatory Period). There were roughly 20,000 Jews in Jerusalem and its environs, as compared with an Arab population of around 300,000 (which is nearly 7%). This grew during the the Mandatory Period to roughly 100,000 Jews, most of whom were not Mizrahi Jews, but the descendants of Europeans.
The Jewish-Arab Engagement of 1947-1949 saw the expulsion of all Jews in the Palestinian Territories as they were seen to be on the side of the Jewish State. The period from 1949-1967 (the Jordanian West Bank) was the only time in the last two millenia when no Jews lived in or were permitted to visit the Old City of Jerusalem. Any endemic Palestinian Jewry crossed into Israel after this forcible expulsion. In 1967, a minority of Israeli Mizrahi Jews (of which some were historically Palestinian, but had shed that title) joined in the settlement building in the West Bank and Gaza, primarily in the environs of Jerusalem and in the Old City itself. However, this was a minority of settlers both because a stronger pull to attract settlers existed in the Ashkenazic Communities (Nationalist fervor) and because those communities contained more individuals. With the Israeli unilateral withdrawal from Gaza, there are no more Mizrahi Jews in that area.
A decent estimate of the Mizrahim remaining in East Jerusalem and the Israeli Settlements scattered throughout the West Bank would be 60,000 (of a total of between 200,000 and 300,000 settlers).
What climate did ancient palestine have?
It was the same as it is today in Modern Israel: a Mediterranean climate with long, hot, rainless summers and relatively short, cool, rainy winters.
What was reason for Arab traders?
One of the main benefits of settling, where people did so, was that crops could be easily irrigated along river valleys. However, since the Arabian Peninsula is mostly desert, the benefits of irrigation do not exist. As a result, nomadic pastoralism is much easier to maintain. The grasses and shrubs that domesticated animals need to eat are more hardy than the grains that humans consume and animal byproducts such as cheese and meat can be very nutritive.
That was the "childhood" of their civilisation; this is how most civilisations began.
What are the similarities between the Arab-Israeli conflict and the Indian-Pakistani Conflict?
No. The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict is something that actually exists. There is no such thing as the Indian-Palestinian Conflict. Therefore, they cannot be the same thing.
Perhaps you mean the Indian-Pakistani Conflict, which is a real conflict, but a different one from the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict. Both conflicts are similar in that there were two different groups of people were living in the same former colony that wanted to each form their own country and did so with varying degrees of success.
Why did the Phoenicians trade?
Trade or commerce -- the buying and selling of goods, especially on a large scale between geographic areas -- is economic and necessity driven. What one area has, it exports/trades for what it doesn't have/needs or wants. And vice versa. So it's a means of obtaining goods and earning wealth.
The Phoenicians were a maritime society and thus trade was a natural extension. They and the Greeks dominated commerce of the Mediterranean in and around 1400 to 1200 BCE.
What is the religion of the chaldean empire?
All Chaldean's are guaranteed to be Catholic! They speak Chaldean, which is a modern version of Aramaic, the language that Jesus spoke. The Chaldean language is very similar to Assyrian, and the Chaldean culture is very similar to that of Catholic Syriac's.
What was a major consequence of the Yom Kippur War?
It lead to numerous things. The most important result was bringing Egypt and Israel together to make peace.
To what extent did the Camp David Accords resolve the Arab-Israeli conflict?
The Camp David Accords of 1979 resulted in the Egyptian-Israeli Peace Agreement, which returned the Israeli-occupied Sinai Peninsula to Egypt in return for Egyptian recognition of Israel's existence and a cessation of war with Israel. This was critical in giving Israel a stable and functional ally in the region that could provide Israel with petroleum and natural gas after Iran broke off relations with Israel in the same year.
What was life like in israel before Christianity?
The best reference to this question is the Old Testament. All of this happened in and around Israel before the apostles were called Christians in Antioch. Moreover this all happened before Christ was on the Earth.
Who was the Ottoman Emperor during World War 1?
Sultans Mehmet V and Mehmet VI were the Ottoman Emperors during World War I.
Sadat's unpopular domestic and international policies, his role of superstar of the western media due to what was seen as his subordination to American and Israeli strategy was purchased at the price of alienation from the Arab world. This combined with charges of corruption and repression at home led fatefully to the conspiracy against him with the resulting assassination.
His signing of a peace agreement at Camp david with Menachem Begin for Israel was seen as a betrayal of the sad plight of the Palestinians suffering Israeli oppression, land theft and ethnic cleansing. Many Arabs believed that only a unified Arab stance and the threat of force would persuade Israel to negotiate a settlement of the Palestinian issue that would satisfy Palestinian demands for a homeland. Without Egypt's military power, the threat of force evaporated because no single Arab state was strong enough militarily to confront Israel alone. Thus, the Arabs felt betrayed and dismayed that the Palestinian issue, the core of the Arab-Israeli conflict, would remain an unresolved, destabilizing force in the region.
The agreement with Israel brought peace to Egypt but not prosperity. With no real improvement in the economy, Sadat became increasingly unpopular. His isolation in the Arab world was matched by his increasing remoteness from the mass of Egyptians. While Sadat's critics in the Arab world remained beyond his reach, increasingly he reacted to criticism at home by expanding censorship and jailing his opponents. Sadat subjected the Egyptians to a series of referenda on his actions and proposals that he invariably won by more than 99 percent of the vote. In May 1980, an impressive, nonpartisan body of citizens charged Sadat with superseding his own constitution.
In the months leading up to the assassination Sadat had lost much of his support at home and in the West due to a brutal crackdown on fundamentalists. In June 1981 tensions between Muslims and Copts in Egypt exploded into a gruesome round of violence in the overcrowded Cairo slum of al-Zawiyya al-Hamra, precipitated by intense summer heat coupled with frequent cutoffs in the water supply. Men, women, and children were slaughtered.
Egypt and the world were horrified by these events. Tensions continued to mount as Muslims and Christians blamed one another in inflammatory press accounts. In September, Sadat cracked down on both sides with mass arrests and brutal police tactics. The powerful Islamic student associations were banned on September 3; their leaders were arrested and roughed up. The head of the Coptic Church, Pope Shenuda III, was banished to a monastery.
At his funeral the following American dignitaries were in attendance: three former presidents: Jimmy Carter, Gerald Ford and Richard Nixon. Among the other members of the American delegation to the funeral: Secretary of State Alexander M. Haig Jr., Defense Secretary Caspar W. Weinberger and former secretary of state Henry Kissinger.
Name the judges in the book of Judges in the Bible?
Othniel, Ehud, Shamgar, Deborah, Gideon, Tola, Jair, Jephthah, Ibzan, Elon, Abdon, Samson. Some add Barak and Abimelech, but they are not given the title of Judge in the Tanakh (Jewish Bible).
Another two are Eli and Samuel, but they are named in the book of Samuel, not in the book of Judges.
Does the US support Israel or palestine?
Answer 1
In the Israel -- Palestine conflict, the US is neutral on the side of Israel. The United States is trying to get Israel and Palestine to reach a peace agreement between each other.
Answer 2
The United States supports both Israel and Palestine. The United States is also prepared to support and aide any Arab country (like Egypt) that is willing to trade violence and antagonism for peace.
The United States support for the State of Israel is the stronger of the two and comes from a variety of sources. Israel has cooperated with the United States on diplomatic issues, military and intelligence exchanges, large amounts of trade, and significant technological investment. In addition there a numerous Americans who support the State of Israel because of religious convictions on top of the already-listed reasons.
The United States is the largest donor to UNRWA, the UN organization maintaining the Palestinian Refugee Camps, and is one of the largest donors to the Palestinian Authority, the current official government of Palestine. The United States has consistently endorsed a Roadmap to Peace with a Two-State Solution since the Oslo Accords in 1993.
What was the Arab Caliphate that existed from 750-1258 CE?
The Abbassid Caliphate was the only Caliphate that existed for all of those years and the only Caliphate for which those years serve as book-ends.
However, there are several Caliphates that existed within that time frame such as the Umayyads, Idrissids, Almoravids, Alomohads, Merinids, Sa'adians, Aghlabids, Tulunids, Fatimids, Ayyubids, Samanids, Hamdanids, Buyids, and Sarmanids. (There may be a few more as well).
What contributed to the unity of the Muslim empire?
Amswer 1
They taught the Qur'an and live off the story of Mohammad.
Answer 2
The Islamic Caliphate only held together as one empire for 120 years (630 C.E. to 750 C.E.). This is less time than the United States was around and roughly the equivalent time of the worldwide British Empire (1830-1950). Therefore, it is not unrealistic or special that the Rightly-Guided Caliphate and its successor state the Umayyad Caliphate remained united. There was a strong intent to integrate the conquered populations and many in the territories wished to become Muslim due either to conviction or to financial incentive. When the Abbassids overthrew the Umayyads in the Middle East, the Islamic Empire broke up into numerous Caliphates and Sultanates (such as the Umayyads, Abbassids, Idrissids, Aghlabids), returning to the natural state of disunity. The Abbassid Caliphate would further break down into in the next two centuries into the Fatimid, Ayyubid, and Buyid Caliphates. The fact that the Ottomans became the spiritual successor State to the Rightly-Guided Caliphate by way of the Umayyads by way of the Abbassids by way of the Ayyubids by way of the Mamluks by way of the Seljuks, is purely incidental and only occurred because the central Middle East was consistently under the control of an Empire that was Islamic. These empires were held together by institutions such as the governates (wilayat), roads, and police/soldiers, just like every other empire. It just happens that track record of violence and repression is better for Islamic Empires.
Which ethnic group of Southwest Asia and North Africa is an example of a nation without a state?
The Kurds.
There are others, but they have significantly smaller populations.
What was Usamah ibn- Munqidh's opinion on the actions of the Crusaders?
Usamah learned manners, to accept God's judgement, and to not be afraid. He became a great poet, warrior, and hunter.
How did the size of the ottoman empire compare to those in Europe and the middle east?
It depends on the century the question refers to. In the 16th Century, the Ottoman Empire was the most powerful empire west of China. In the 19th Century, the Ottoman Empire was one of the weakest empires in the world and called the "Sick Man of Europe".
What is happening in the middle east?
The area around the eastern Mediterranean; from Turkey to northern Africa and eastward to Iran; the site of such ancient civilizations as Phoenicia and Babylon and Egypt and the birthplace of Judaism and Christianity and Islam; had continuous economic and political turmoil in the 20th century.
The Middle East is closer to Europe than is the Far East. While parts of it may sometimes be called East Asia, some countries in northeast Africa are also considered to be in the Middle East.
Why Arabs have had difficult time in adapting to the American way of life?
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It is incorrect to suggest any particular person or all members of a particular group as identified by race, religion, or other cultural differences have a difficult time adapting to the way of life in any adopted country.
Humans are highly adaptable by nature, but some more so than others. So, a person moving from, for example, the United Kingdom to another English-speaking country, will adjust to many differences, from climate and clothing to shopping and schooling, and so on.
Some of our hypothetical UK migrants might thoroughly enjoy their new environment; others might see only the differences they don't like, and drift into social groups with other like-minded expatriates, where much complaining about their new country might happen.
Others, while enjoying the company of those from their old country, will merge happily into their new environment and see richness in changes where others might see themselves as deprived of their old ways.
These variations in attitudes can occur within the scope of even a small family; eventually a healthy family adjusts to the benefit of all.
Homesickness is inevitable in all of us, and the greater the changes we experience, the greater the homesickness.
But America, and all other countries built on immigration, are testament to the adaptability of people.
There will always be a minority - frequently a very noisy one - which objects to newcomers, particularly if they seem obviously different and very especially if they look different. Don't be swayed by media reports which seek to magnify problems experienced by those adapting to a new environment. These reports, and those who encourage them, cause problems while never attempting to reach out with a friendly greeting to someone who might be feeling strange and bewildered, and a little scared.
Instead of focusing on differences, focus on similarities. We're all the same, where it doesn't show, and we need to feel safe and comfortable in order to adapt to new surroundings, whether we're a child on our first day at the same school all our siblings and friends are attending, or whether we're a family just arriving in a brand new country which will be our home.
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Arabs or Muslims mostly, have strong connections to their Religion and believe that anyone who disrespects their religion should be executed. Also, in Muslim countries, the religion law is followed strictly, so when the go to America and Westernised countries they are unfamiliar with their way of life because of their strict culture.
The main reason they don't adapt well is because of the different type of laws in other countries which they are not used to.
