MIDDLE EAST
Unit One (8000 BCE to 600 BCE)
Unit Four (1450-1750)
- Mesopotamia: the Fertile Crescent (c. 6000
- Ottoman Empire (early 1300s-1923)
BCE)
o Military might and gunpowder
- Sumer (3000 BCE): kings with absolute
weapons
authority (followed by priests, free
o Janissaries led military strength
commoners, dependent clients, slaves)
o 1453 captured Constantinople,
o Cuneiform (2900 BCE)
renamed Istanbul
o Epic of Gilgamesh
o Tightly centralized absolute
o Hammurabi (1792-1750 BCE):Law
monarchy
code first in documented history
o Reached peak in mid-1600s
- Hittites (c. 1300 to 800 CE)
o Decrease in trade when Europe
- Phoenicians: seafarers who est. colonies
circumvents their trade routes
throughout Mediterranean (Carthage); first
- Safavid Dynasty in Persia
use of an alphabetic writing
- Hebrews (2000-1000 BCE) migration to
Unit Five (1750-1900)
Egypt and Exodus
- Ottoman Empire
- Assyrians (c. 700 to 600 BCE)???
o By 1700s fallen behind Europe and
provinces increasingly independent
o Losing territory, trade declining, they
Unit Two (600 BCE to 600 CE)
- Persians and Cyrus the Great (6th c. BCE)
rely more foreign loans
- Alexander the Great and Hellenistic
o Mahmud II’s reforms
Kingdoms (331 BCE – c. 100 CE)
o Tanzimat Era (1839-1879): Reform
- Roman Empire (c. 100 CE)
laws with French legal system
th
- Byzantine Empire (4 c.)
Unit Six (1900 to present)
- Young Turks lead coup to overthrow sultan
Unit Three (600 to 1450)
- Islam est. c. 610 by Mohammed; by his
in 1908
death, all Arabia under Islam
- Young Turks ally with Central Powers in
- Umayyad clan (661-750 CE)
WWI
o Turned caliphate into hereditary
- Ottoman Empire collapsed in 1918
monarchy & expand into West Asia,
o Turkey declared a republic under
North Africa and Spain
Ataturk and modernize and
o Arabic common language, capital at
westernize
Damascus
o French and British mandates control
o Cultures tolerated if obeyed and paid
Syria, Palestine, Iraq
taxes
- Rise in Arab nationalism conflicts with
- Abbasid Caliphate (750-1258 CE)
Zionism in Palestine
o Baghdad commercial and political
- Balfour Declaration of 1917
center
- 1947: British give mandate back to United
o Size and Mamluk slaves weakened
Nations, they created the state of Israel
empire
- Six Day War 1967
- Dar-al-Islam united empire w/ culture
- Palestinian Liberation Organization
- Crusader Kingdoms (1099-1291)
(PLO) created to reclaim Palestine
- Seljuk Turks (c. 1000-1200)
- Iran 1979: Ayatollah Khomeini forced Shah
o Captured Baghdad 1055, defeated
Reza into exile
Byzantines 1071
o Sharia the law of the land:
o Sultan secular monarch
restrictions on women
- Mongols (c. 1200 to 1300s)
- OPEC (Organization of Petroleum
o 1258: defeated Abbasids
Exporting Countries) 1960: effort to raise
o Converted to Islam by 1295; local
price of oil through cooperation
rulers intact
o Mongols defeated by Mamluks in
Egypt in1260