Middle East
, the lands around the southern and eastern shores of the
Mediterranean Sea
,
encompassing
at least the
Arabian Peninsula
and, by some definitions,
Iran
,
North Africa
, and sometimes beyond. The central part of this general area was formerly called the
Near East
, a name given to it by some of the first modern Western geographers and historians, who tended to divide what they called the Orient into three regions. Near East applied to the
region
nearest
Europe
, extending from the Mediterranean Sea to the
Persian Gulf
; Middle East, from the Persian Gulf to
Southeast Asia
; and Far East, those regions facing the
Pacific Ocean
.
The change in usage began to evolve prior to
World War II
and tended to be confirmed during that war, when the term Middle East was given to the British military command in
Egypt
. By the mid-20th century a common definition of the Middle East
encompassed
the states or territories of
Turkey
,
Cyprus
,
Syria
,
Lebanon
,
Iraq
, Iran,
Israel
, the
West Bank
, the
Gaza Strip
,
Jordan
, Egypt,
Sudan
,
Libya
, and the various states and territories of Arabia proper (
Saudi Arabia
,
Kuwait
,
Yemen
,
Oman
,
Bahrain
,
Qatar
, and the Trucial States, or Trucial Oman [now
United Arab Emirates
]). Subsequent events have tended, in loose usage, to enlarge the number of lands included in the definition. The three North African countries of
Tunisia
,
Algeria
, and
Morocco
are closely connected in
sentiment
and
foreign policy
with the
Arab
states. In addition, geographic factors often require statesmen and others to take account of
Afghanistan
and
Pakistan
in connection with the affairs of the Middle East.
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Occasionally,
Greece
is included in the compass of the Middle East because the Middle Eastern (then Near Eastern) question in its modern form first became apparent when the Greeks rose in rebellion to assert their independence of the
Ottoman Empire
in 1821 (
see
Eastern Question
). Turkey and Greece, together with the predominantly Arabic-speaking lands around the eastern end of the Mediterranean, were also formerly known as the
Levant
.
Use of the term Middle East nonetheless remains unsettled, and some agencies (notably the
United States
State Department
and certain bodies of the United Nations) still employ the term Near East.