Contents
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| Timeline of Islamic history: 6th | 7th | 8th | 9th | 10th | 11th | 12th | 13th | 14th | 15th | 16th | 17th | 18th | 19th | 20th | 21st century |
| | This article needs additional citations for verification .(December 2009) |
| Timeline of Islamic history: 6th | 7th | 8th | 9th | 10th | 11th | 12th | 13th | 14th | 15th | 16th | 17th | 18th | 19th | 20th | 21st century |
Hussein bin Ali al-Hashimi was an Arab leader from the Banu Hashim clan who was the Sharif and Emir of Mecca from 1908 and, after proclaiming the Great Arab Revolt against the Ottoman Empire, King of the Hejaz, even if he refused this title, from 1916 to 1924. He proclaimed himself Caliph after the abolition of the Ottoman Caliphate in 1924 and stayed in power until 1925 when Hejaz was invaded by the Saudis. He is usually considered as the father of pan-Arabism.
The Middle East, also known as the Near East, is home to one of the Cradles of Civilization and has seen many of the world's oldest cultures and civilizations. The region's history started from the earliest human settlements and continues through several major pre- and post-Islamic Empires to today's nation-states of the Middle East.
This timeline tries to compile dates of important historical events that happened in or that led to the rise of the Middle East. The Middle East is the territory that comprises today's Egypt, the Persian Gulf states, Iran, Iraq, Israel and Palestine, Cyprus, Jordan, Lebanon, Oman, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Turkey, United Arab Emirates, and Yemen. The Middle East, with its particular characteristics, was not to emerge until the late second millennium AD. To refer to a concept similar to that of today's Middle East but earlier in time, the term ancient Near East is used.
Iran–Turkey relations are the bilateral relations between the Islamic Republic of Iran and the Republic of Turkey. The two states' relationship is complex and characterized by periods of both tension and cooperation, as both Iran and Turkey are fighting for influence in the Middle East through supporting opposing proxies as part of a proxy conflict. The two countries are also major trade partners and are perceived as mutually interdependent due to geographical proximity as well as historically shared cultural, linguistic, and ethnic traits. Notably, the Kurds, an Iranic ethnic group, and the Iranian Azerbaijanis, a Turkic ethnic group, comprise the second-largest ethnicities of Turkey and Iran, respectively.
The origin of Shia–Sunni relations can be traced back to a dispute over the succession to the Islamic prophet Muhammad as a caliph of the Islamic community. After the death of Muhammad in 632, a group of Muslims, who would come to be known as the Sunnis, believed that Muhammad's successor should be Abu Bakr, whereas a second group of Muslims, who would come to be known as the Shias, believed that his successor should have been Ali. This dispute spread across various parts of the Muslim world, which eventually led to the Battle of Jamal and Battle of Siffin. Sectarianism based on this historic dispute intensified greatly after the Battle of Karbala, in which Husayn ibn Ali and some of his close partisans, including members and children of the household of prophet, were killed by the ruling Umayyad Caliph Yazid I, and the outcry for revenge divided the early Islamic community, albeit disproportionately, into two groups, the Sunni and the Shia. This is known today as the Islamic schism.
The Great War for Civilisation: The Conquest of the Middle East is a book published in 2005 by the English journalist Robert Fisk. The book is based on many of the articles Fisk wrote when he was serving as a correspondent in the Middle East for The Times and The Independent. The book revolves around several key themes regarding the history of the modern Middle East: the Arab–Israeli conflict, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, the Gulf Wars, the Algerian Civil War, as well as other regional topics such as the Armenian genocide. The Great War for Civilisation is the second book Fisk has written about the Middle East. The first one, Pity the Nation, was about the Lebanese Civil War.
Christianity, which originated in the Middle East during the 1st century AD, is a significant minority religion within the region, characterized by the diversity of its beliefs and traditions, compared to Christianity in other parts of the Old World. Christians now make up approximately 5% of the Middle Eastern population, down from 20% in the early 20th century. Cyprus is the only Christian majority country in the Middle East, with Christians forming between 76% and 78% of the country's total population, most of them adhering to Eastern Orthodox Christianity. Lebanon has the second highest proportion of Christians in the Middle East, around 40%, predominantly Maronites. Egypt has the next largest proportion of Christians, at around 10% of its total population. Copts, numbering around 10 million, constitute the single largest Christian community in the Middle East.
Saudi Arabia and Turkey relations have long fluctuated between cooperation and alliance to enmity and distrust. Since the 19th century, the two nations have always had a complicated relationship. While Turkey and Saudi Arabia are major economic partners, the two have a tense political relationship, deemed from the historic enmity.
The Arab Cold War was a period of political rivalry in the Arab world from the early 1950s to the late 1970s as part of the broader Cold War. The generally accepted beginning of the Arab Cold War was the Egyptian revolution of 1952, which ultimately led to Gamal Abdel Nasser becoming President of Egypt in 1956. Thereafter, newly established Arab republics defined by revolutionary secular nationalism, and largely drawing inspiration from Nasser's Egypt, were engaged in political rivalries of varying degrees of ferocity with conservative traditionalist Arab monarchies, led chiefly by Saudi Arabia. The approximate end point of this period of internecine rivalry and conflict is generally viewed as being the 1979 Iranian Revolution, which culminated in the installation of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini as the leader of Iran's theocratic government. Thereafter, the bitterness of intra-Arab strife was eclipsed by a new era of Arab-Iranian tensions.
This is a timeline of major events in the history of the modern state of Jordan.
Egypt–Syria relations refers to the bilateral relations between the Arab Republic of Egypt and the Syrian Arab Republic. Egypt has an embassy in Damascus. Syria has an embassy in Cairo. Both countries are members of the Arab League.
Arab nationalism is a political ideology asserting that Arabs constitute a single nation. As a traditional nationalist ideology, it promotes Arab culture and civilization, celebrates Arab history, glorifies the Arabic language as well as Arabic literature, and calls for the rejuvenation of Arab society through total unification. It bases itself on the premise that the people of the Arab world — from the Atlantic Ocean to the Indian Ocean — constitute one nation bound together by a common identity: ethnicity, language, culture, history, geography, and politics.
Pan-Arabism is an ideology that espouses the unification of the countries of North Africa and Western Asia from the Atlantic Ocean to the Arabian Sea, which is referred to as the Arab world. It is closely connected to Arab nationalism, which asserts the view that the Arabs constitute a single nation. Its popularity reached its height during the 1950s and 1960s. Advocates of pan-Arabism have often espoused socialist principles and strongly opposed Western political involvement in the Arab world. It also sought to empower Arab states against outside forces by forming alliances and, to a lesser extent, economic co-operation.
The history of Syria covers events which occurred on the territory of the present Syrian Arab Republic and events which occurred in the region of Syria. Throughout ancient times the territory of present Syrian Arab Republic was occupied and ruled by several empires, including the Sumerians, Mitanni, Assyrians, Babylonians, Egyptians, Hittites, Canaanites, Phoenicians, Arameans, Amorites, Persians, Greeks and Romans. Syria is considered to have emerged as an independent country for the first time on 24 October 1945, upon the signing of the United Nations Charter by the Syrian government, effectively ending France's mandate by the League of Nations to "render administrative advice and assistance to the population" of Syria, which came in effect in April 1946.
Iran and Saudi Arabia are engaged in an ongoing struggle for influence in the Middle East and other regions of the Muslim world. The two countries have provided varying degrees of support to opposing sides in nearby conflicts, including the civil wars in Syria and Yemen; and disputes in Bahrain, Lebanon, Qatar, and Iraq. It also extends to disputes or broader competition in other countries globally including in West, North and East Africa, South, Central, Southeast Asia, the Balkans, and the Caucasus.
The involvement of Turkey within the Iran–Saudi Arabia proxy conflict has been ambiguous, and the country has supported both nations at various times.