Introduction

No background required. This book assumes you know nothing about the region. It explains every name, war, and term as it comes up, and it tries hard to be fair to everyone involved.

What this book is

This is a reader's guide to the history, politics, religion, and culture of nine neighbours on the eastern edge of the Mediterranean and the Arabian Peninsula: the Levant as a region, then Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Palestine, Israel, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, and Turkey.

It is written for a curious person, not a specialist. You can read it front to back, or jump to one country, or use the search box to find a single event. Each country chapter follows the same shape, so once you have read one you know where to look in the others.

Where we start: the deep past

None of these countries existed in their current form a hundred years ago. Most of the borders were drawn in the 20th century, many of them by European powers. To understand the place you have to start much earlier: with the first cities in Mesopotamia and along the Nile, the rise of three world religions, a thousand years of caliphates and empires, and four centuries under the Ottomans. So each chapter begins in the ancient world and walks forward to today.

Our one rule: facts first, fairly told

The modern history here includes some of the most disputed events on earth. People who lived through the same war often describe it in completely different words. This book follows a few habits to stay honest:

• State what is well established, and flag what is contested. Where serious people disagree, the text says so and gives the main views rather than picking a winner.
• Attribute strong claims. "According to" and "X says" are used on purpose.
• Avoid loaded language. The same event can be a "war of independence" to one side and a "catastrophe" to the other. Where two names exist, you will usually see both, with a note on who uses which.
• Separate a government from its people. Criticism of a state or a leader is not a judgment on everyone who lives there.

Don't be confused: neutral does not mean "no facts." Being even-handed is not the same as saying "we cannot know." Many things are well documented. Neutrality here means representing the documented record and the honest disagreements, not watering everything down.

A note on recent and sensitive events

Some of what follows is very recent, including the war in Gaza that began in October 2023 and the fall of the Assad government in Syria in December 2024. Recent events are still being studied, casualty figures are often disputed while fighting continues, and the picture can change. Treat the most recent sections as a careful snapshot rather than a final word, and check current reporting for anything live.

How the chapters are built

Every country chapter covers, in plain order:

1. The land and the deep past (who lived here first)
2. Empires and rulers (who was in charge, and when)
3. The Ottoman centuries and the modern state (how today's country formed)
4. Religion and people (who lives there and what they believe)
5. Big events and conflicts (the things you will hear referenced)
6. Culture and food (including where famous dishes come from)
7. Today, and how to talk about it (the current situation, and tips for a respectful conversation)

Three "threads" chapters then cut across all of them: regional geopolitics, food, and education and the IQ question. At the back you will find a timeline, a glossary, and a short guide on how to talk about this.

Start with how to read this book, or jump straight to the essential background. 👉

How to read this book

A few tools will make everything that follows easier to follow.

The fastest way in

If you only have ten minutes, read these three in order:

1. Essential background, the big shapes of regional history on one page.
2. The Ottoman Empire and its long shadow, because every country here was once Ottoman and still carries the marks.
3. Faiths of the region, which explains Sunni and Shia, the local Christian churches, Judaism, the Druze, and others.

After that, any country chapter will make sense.

Use the search box

mdBook has a search box at the top left (or press the S key). It indexes every page. Type a name (Nasser, Atatürk), a place (Aleppo, Mecca), a war (Six-Day War), or a term (Nakba, intifada, mandate) to jump straight to it.

How to read a country chapter

Each country chapter uses the same seven-part shape described in the introduction. If you want only the modern politics, skip to the "big events" and "today" parts. If you want the deep story, start at the top.

Boxes and signs to watch for

Don't be confused: ... These boxes untangle two things people often mix up, like Persia and Arabia, or Sunni and Shia, or "Arab" and "Muslim."

Tables summarise rulers, wars, and dates so you can scan them quickly. A "👉" at the end of each chapter points to the natural next read.

A short cheat-sheet of ideas you will meet everywhere

These come up in almost every chapter. Full entries are in the glossary.

A word on names and spellings

Arabic, Hebrew, Turkish, and Persian names reach English through different spelling systems, so you will see Muhammad and Mohammed, Quran and Koran, Hizbullah and Hezbollah. This book picks one common spelling for each and sticks with it. Place names also change with politics, so where two names are in use, both appear.

With those tools in hand, let us start with the big picture. 👉

Essential background: how the modern map was drawn

This chapter is the whole region on a few pages. It is the frame that every country chapter hangs on. Read it once and the later chapters will click into place.

The land shapes the story

Three landscapes set the stage:

• The Fertile Crescent. An arc of well-watered land curving from the Mediterranean coast (today's Lebanon, Palestine, Israel, western Syria) up through northern Syria and down the Tigris and Euphrates rivers into Iraq. This is where farming and the first cities began. The eastern part is Mesopotamia, Greek for "between the rivers."
• The Arabian Peninsula. A vast, mostly dry plateau (today's Saudi Arabia, Yemen, and the Gulf states). Its edges, especially the green highlands of Yemen, supported old kingdoms; its deserts shaped a mobile, tribal way of life.
• Anatolia. The high peninsula that is most of modern Turkey, a bridge between Asia and Europe, fought over for its position for thousands of years.

Two facts follow from this map. First, whoever controlled the trade routes and water grew rich. Second, the region has always been a crossroads, which is why so many peoples, faiths, and empires meet here.

The deep past, in one sweep

The history below moves fast on purpose. Each country chapter slows down on its own piece.

The first civilizations (about 3500 to 500 BCE). In Mesopotamia the Sumerians built the first cities and the first writing (cuneiform), followed by the Akkadian, Babylonian, and Assyrian empires. Along the eastern Mediterranean the Phoenicians (in today's Lebanon) became famous traders and spread the alphabet. The Israelites established kingdoms in the southern Levant. In the southwest, the Egyptians built one of the longest-lasting states in history. In Yemen, incense-rich kingdoms such as Saba (the biblical Sheba) grew wealthy on trade.

The classical age (about 500 BCE to 600 CE). The Persian empires ruled much of the region from the east. Alexander the Great (around 330 BCE) spread Greek culture across it. Then Rome absorbed the Mediterranean lands, and after Rome split, the eastern Christian Byzantine Empire ruled from Constantinople (today's Istanbul). To the east, the Persian Sasanian empire was Byzantium's great rival. Christianity began in Roman Judea and spread across the region long before Islam.

The rise of Islam and the caliphates (from 610 CE). In the Arabian city of Mecca, the Prophet Muhammad began preaching Islam around 610 CE. Within a century of his death in 632, Arab Muslim armies had conquered an empire stretching from Spain to Central Asia. The great early states were the Rashidun (the first four caliphs), the Umayyads (capital Damascus), and the Abbasids (capital Baghdad), under whom a golden age of science, medicine, and philosophy flourished.

The middle centuries (about 1000 to 1500). Power fragmented. The Fatimids ruled from Egypt; Seljuk Turks pushed in from the east; European Crusaders seized parts of the coast for about two centuries before being driven out, notably by Saladin. The Mongols sacked Baghdad in 1258. The Mamluks, a soldier-ruler caste based in Egypt, then dominated the region until the Ottomans.

Don't be confused: Arab, Muslim, Persian, Turk. These are not the same. Arab is mainly a language and culture (Arabic-speaking peoples). Muslim is a follower of Islam, of any nationality; most of the world's Muslims are not Arab. Persian (Iranian) and Turk are distinct peoples with their own languages. Iran is Muslim but not Arab; Turkey is Muslim but neither Arab nor Persian.

The Ottoman centuries (about 1517 to 1918)

From the early 1500s, the Ottoman Empire, ruled from Istanbul by a Turkish dynasty, governed almost everything in this book: the Levant, the holy cities of Arabia, Egypt, and more, for roughly four hundred years. The Ottomans get their own chapter (next) because their long rule, and the way it ended, explains most of the modern map.

The hinge: World War I and the mandates

The Ottomans fought on the losing side of World War I (1914 to 1918) and their empire collapsed. What replaced it was decided largely by Britain and France:

• In the secret Sykes-Picot agreement of 1916, Britain and France agreed to divide the Ottoman Arab lands into spheres of influence.
• The British Balfour Declaration of 1917 promised support for "a national home for the Jewish people" in Palestine, while also pledging not to harm the rights of the existing non-Jewish population. Both halves of that promise would be fought over for a century.
• After the war the League of Nations handed Britain and France "mandates," meaning temporary rule, over the new units: the French Mandate for Syria and Lebanon, and the British Mandate for Palestine, Transjordan, and Iraq.

These outside decisions drew borders that often ignored how people actually lived, grouping rivals together and splitting communities apart. Much of the friction in later chapters traces back to this moment.

The modern era, in four waves

1. Independence (1930s to 1971). One by one the countries became independent states: Saudi Arabia unified in 1932, Lebanon and Syria in the 1940s, Jordan in 1946, the Gulf states by 1971. Turkey reinvented itself as a republic in 1923.

2. The Arab-Israeli conflict. The state of Israel was founded in 1948. The war around its creation displaced most Palestinian Arabs, an event Palestinians call the Nakba (catastrophe). A series of wars followed (1948, 1956, 1967, 1973), and the unresolved question of Palestinian statehood remains the region's most persistent conflict.

3. Ideologies, oil, and the Cold War. Pan-Arab nationalism, led for a time by Egypt's Nasser, competed with monarchies and with political Islam. The discovery of vast oil reserves, above all in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf, reshaped the economy and global politics. The United States and the Soviet Union backed rival governments throughout.

4. Revolution, war, and the present. Iran's 1979 revolution made it a Shia Islamic republic and a rival to Sunni Saudi Arabia. The Arab Spring uprisings of 2011 toppled some leaders and triggered civil wars in Syria, Libya, and Yemen. The 2010s and 2020s have been shaped by those wars, by the rivalry between Saudi Arabia and Iran, by the rise and fall of the extremist group ISIS, by the war in Gaza that began in 2023, and by the fall of Syria's Assad government in 2024.

One-screen timeline

With the shape of the whole story in mind, we turn to the empire whose long rule and sudden collapse drew the modern map: the Ottomans. 👉

The Ottoman Empire and its long shadow

You asked whether these countries "engaged with the Ottomans." The honest answer is bigger than that: for about four hundred years, almost every country in this book was the Ottoman Empire. To understand the region you have to understand the empire that shaped it and the way its collapse set the modern stage.

Where the Ottomans came from

The Ottomans began around 1300 as a small Turkish principality in northwest Anatolia, one of many that filled the gap left by the declining Byzantine and Seljuk states. They were named after their founder, Osman. Over two centuries they grew into a major power. The turning point was 1453, when Sultan Mehmed II captured Constantinople, ending the thousand-year Byzantine Empire and making the city (later called Istanbul) his capital.

Under Selim I (ruled 1512 to 1520) and his son Suleiman the Magnificent (ruled 1520 to 1566) the empire reached its height. Selim defeated the Egyptian Mamluks in 1516 and 1517, bringing Syria, the Levant, Egypt, and the Arabian holy cities of Mecca and Medina under Ottoman rule. From then on the Ottoman sultan also claimed the title of caliph, leader of the world's Sunni Muslims.

How the empire was run

The Ottomans governed a huge, diverse territory for centuries, which required a flexible system:

• Provinces and local elites. Distant regions were run through local governors and notable families, who collected taxes and kept order on the sultan's behalf. Real local power often stayed with established families, a pattern still visible in Levantine politics today.
• The millet system. Religious communities (Orthodox Christians, Armenians, Jews, and others) were organised into self-governing millets that handled their own family law, schools, and worship under their own leaders. This let many faiths coexist for centuries, though non-Muslims had a lower legal status and paid a special tax.
• The military. Early on, the elite Janissary corps, infantry often raised from Christian-born boys converted to Islam, made the Ottoman army one of the strongest in the world.

Don't be confused: Ottoman, Turkish, Muslim. The Ottoman Empire was led by a Turkish dynasty and its court language was heavily Turkish, but it ruled Arabs, Greeks, Armenians, Kurds, Slavs, Jews, and many others. Being "Ottoman" was about being a subject of the sultan, not about being ethnically Turkish. Modern Turkey is the empire's successor state but is far smaller and very different.

Slow decline

From the late 1600s the empire stopped expanding and gradually lost ground to rising European powers and to Russia. By the 1800s it was so financially and militarily strained that European diplomats called it "the sick man of Europe." Reform efforts known as the Tanzimat modernised the army, law, and administration, and a brief constitutional period followed, but the empire kept shrinking, especially in the Balkans.

In 1908 a group of reformers, the Young Turks, seized power and pushed modernisation and, increasingly, Turkish nationalism. That nationalism strained the old multi-ethnic bargain that had held the empire together.

World War I and the catastrophes of the end

The Ottomans entered World War I (1914 to 1918) on the side of Germany and Austria-Hungary, and lost. Several events from these years still shape the region:

• The Armenian Genocide (from 1915). During the war, the Ottoman government deported and killed large numbers of its Armenian population. The great majority of historians and many governments classify this as a genocide, with deaths commonly estimated in the range of one million or more. The modern Turkish state acknowledges mass deaths and wartime atrocities but rejects the term "genocide" and disputes the framing and figures. This remains one of the most sensitive topics in Turkish politics and diplomacy.
• The Arab Revolt (1916). Encouraged by Britain (the episode romanticised in the story of "Lawrence of Arabia"), some Arab leaders, led by Sharif Hussein of Mecca, rose against Ottoman rule in hope of an independent Arab kingdom.
• The secret carve-up. As the previous chapter noted, Britain and France had already agreed in Sykes-Picot (1916) to divide the Arab lands between themselves, and Britain had separately promised support for a Jewish national home in Palestine (the Balfour Declaration, 1917). The Arabs who revolted did not get the unified independent state many expected.

The shadow the Ottomans left

When the empire was abolished in 1922 and the caliphate in 1924, it left marks that the rest of this book keeps running into:

• The borders. Many modern frontiers are lines drawn by Britain and France over former Ottoman provinces, sometimes with a ruler and a map, which is why some look oddly straight and cut across communities.
• Mixed societies. The millet system helped leave behind countries with many faiths living side by side, most visibly in Lebanon and Syria.
• Local power families. Notable families empowered as Ottoman intermediaries often became the political dynasties of the new states.
• A shared memory. Across the Arab world the Ottoman centuries are remembered in very mixed ways, from a lost age of Islamic unity to a period of foreign Turkish rule, and these feelings still color politics between Turkey and its neighbours.

Don't be confused: the caliphate did not survive into modern states. When people today talk about restoring "the caliphate," they are referring to this abolished institution. No current country in this book is a caliphate. The extremist group ISIS claimed to revive one in 2014; it was not recognised by mainstream Muslims and was militarily destroyed.

Next, the faiths that the Ottoman system held together, and that still define communities across the region. 👉

Faiths of the region

This corner of the world is the birthplace of three of the world's major religions and home to many more communities than outsiders expect. You cannot follow the politics without a basic map of who believes what. This chapter gives you that map. It describes beliefs and communities plainly, without judging any of them.

Why religion matters here

In much of this region, religion is not only a private belief. It is also a community identity that often determines which laws govern your marriage, which political bloc represents you, and which neighbourhood you grew up in. That is partly a legacy of the Ottoman millet system (previous chapter), which organised society by faith. So when the news mentions a "Sunni party" or a "Maronite president," it is describing this community dimension, not only theology.

Islam

Islam began in Arabia in the 600s CE and is the majority faith in every country in this book except Israel. Muslims follow the Quran, which they believe is the word of God revealed to the Prophet Muhammad, and the example of the Prophet. Core practices include the declaration of faith, daily prayer, charity, fasting in the month of Ramadan, and, for those able, the hajj pilgrimage to Mecca.

Sunni and Shia

The single most useful religious distinction to learn is Sunni versus Shia.

The split began as a political question after Muhammad's death in 632: who should lead the Muslim community? Most accepted the first elected caliphs; this majority became the Sunnis (today roughly 85 to 90 percent of all Muslims). A minority held that leadership belonged to Muhammad's family line through his cousin and son-in-law Ali; they became the Shia. Over centuries the two developed somewhat different law, ritual, and clergy.

Don't be confused: Sunni and Shia are not at permanent war. For most of history most Sunnis and Shia lived side by side. The sharp "Sunni vs Shia" framing in today's news is largely about the modern political rivalry between Sunni-led Saudi Arabia and Shia-led Iran, each backing allies across the region. Ordinary belief and everyday coexistence are a separate matter from that geopolitical contest.

Two more Islamic terms worth knowing:

• Sufism is the mystical, inward tradition within Islam (both Sunni and Shia), focused on the direct experience of God, often through poetry, music, and orders of devotees. It is widespread and culturally rich across the region.
• Wahhabism / Salafism is a strict, puritanical Sunni reform movement that began in 18th-century Arabia and became closely tied to the Saudi state. It is covered in the Saudi Arabia chapter.

Christianity

Christianity began here, in Roman-ruled Judea, and the region's Christians are among the oldest continuous Christian communities on earth, predating Islam by centuries. They are a shrinking but historically central minority, especially in the Levant. The main churches you will hear about:

• Maronite Catholics, centered in Lebanon, in communion with Rome but with their own ancient traditions. They are central to Lebanese history and politics.
• Greek Orthodox and Greek Catholic (Melkite) communities across Lebanon, Syria, Palestine, and Jordan.
• Armenian churches (Apostolic and Catholic), with communities across the region, many descended from survivors of the 1915 genocide.
• Syriac and Assyrian churches, among the oldest of all, some still using dialects of Aramaic, the language Jesus is thought to have spoken.
• Copts, the large Christian community of Egypt (just outside this book's set of countries but important to the regional picture).

Christians have lived among Muslim majorities for some 1,400 years. The experience has ranged widely across time and place, from long stretches of practical coexistence and shared culture to periods of pressure, discrimination, and violence. The 20th and 21st centuries, with their wars and the rise of extremist groups, have driven heavy Christian emigration from several countries. How this coexistence works in practice is explored most fully in the Lebanon chapter.

Judaism

Judaism is the oldest of the three faiths and is rooted in this land; Jerusalem is its holiest city. For most of the last two thousand years Jews lived as a dispersed minority (the diaspora), including long-established Jewish communities across the Middle East and North Africa. In the modern era the Zionist movement sought a Jewish national home in the land of historic Israel, which led to the founding of the state of Israel in 1948 (see the Israel chapter). After 1948, most Jews of the surrounding Arab countries left or were forced out and resettled, many in Israel.

Smaller communities you should recognise

The region's diversity goes well beyond the big three:

• Druze. A distinct faith that grew out of Islam about a thousand years ago, with secret teachings and a strong communal identity. Druze live mainly in Lebanon, Syria, and Israel, and have often played an outsized political and military role.
• Alawites. A minority offshoot related to Shia Islam, concentrated in coastal Syria. The ruling Assad family was Alawite, which made the community central to Syria's modern politics and civil war.
• Yazidis. A small, ancient religion of mainly Kurdish-speaking people in the Syria-Iraq borderlands. They were targeted for genocide by ISIS in 2014.
• Baha'i. A faith that began in 19th-century Persia and teaches the unity of religions; its world center is in Haifa, in Israel.

Don't be confused: minority does not mean marginal. Several of these small communities, the Maronites in Lebanon, the Alawites in Syria, the Druze in more than one country, have held political or military power far beyond their numbers. Counting heads does not tell you who holds influence.

With the faith map in hand, we can start the regional story where four of our countries overlap: the Levant. 👉

The Levant: Bilad al-Sham

When you grouped "Laventine" with Lebanon, Syria, Palestine, and Jordan, you were pointing at something real. These countries are pieces of one older region. This chapter explains that region, why the four were once a single space, and the wars and massacres you are most likely to hear referenced when people say "the Levant."

What "the Levant" means

The Levant is the eastern coast of the Mediterranean and its hinterland: today's Lebanon, Syria, Palestine, Israel, Jordan, and adjoining areas. The name comes from a French and Italian word for "rising," as in where the sun rises, the east.

In Arabic the same region is Bilad al-Sham, often translated as Greater Syria. For most of history "Syria" did not mean the modern country with that name; it meant this whole region. A traveler in 1900 going from Beirut to Damascus to Jerusalem to Amman would not have crossed a single international border. They were all Bilad al-Sham, all Ottoman.

Don't be confused: "Syria" the region vs. "Syria" the country. Until the 20th century, "Syria" usually meant the entire Levant (Greater Syria). The modern Republic of Syria is only one slice of that older region. When you read an old text mentioning Syria, it may well include Lebanon, Palestine, and Jordan.

A Levantine is a person from this region. Historically the word also described the cosmopolitan, multilingual merchant communities of the coastal cities, people at home in Arabic, Turkish, French, Italian, and Greek at once. That mixing is the region's signature.

One land, deep roots

The Levant has been continuously inhabited and fought over for as long as civilization has existed. Its layers include:

• The first traders and alphabet-makers. The Phoenicians of the Lebanese coast (Tyre, Sidon, Byblos) ran a Mediterranean trading network and spread the alphabet that underlies our own.
• Israelite and other kingdoms in the southern Levant, and the Aramaeans, whose language Aramaic became the regional lingua franca for centuries.
• Empires passing through: Egyptians, Assyrians, Babylonians, Persians, Greeks, Romans, and the Christian Byzantines.
• The Islamic centuries. The Levant was the heart of the Umayyad caliphate, whose capital was Damascus, one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities on earth. Later came the Crusades, when European Christians held parts of the coast for roughly two hundred years, and the Muslim leader Saladin who rolled them back.
• Ottoman rule for four centuries, which is the immediate background to the modern states.

How one region became four countries

This is the key modern fact. The four-into-one story is the reverse: one region was cut into several countries by outsiders.

After World War I and the fall of the Ottomans, the victorious Europeans split Bilad al-Sham along the lines of the secret Sykes-Picot deal:

• France took a mandate over the north and created Syria and, carved out of it, Lebanon (enlarged so that Christians, especially Maronites, would have a country with a Christian plurality).
• Britain took a mandate over the south: Palestine on the Mediterranean side of the Jordan River, and Transjordan (today's Jordan) on the east side.

So Lebanon, Syria, Palestine, Israel, and Jordan are the children of one Ottoman region split by French and British pens around 1920. That single fact explains why their histories are so tangled and why families, dialects, and cuisines flow across the borders.

The conflicts and massacres you will hear named

You specifically wanted to be able to follow references to "the Levantine war" or "a massacre." There is no single event by that exact name, so here are the major ones people usually mean, each explained in one place. Fuller accounts are in the country chapters.

The 1860 Mount Lebanon civil war and the Damascus massacre. In 1860, fighting between Druze and Maronite Christians in Mount Lebanon turned into large-scale massacres of Christians, with related killings of Christians in Damascus. Thousands died. European powers intervened, and the Ottomans created a special autonomous district for Mount Lebanon. This is the deep root of Lebanon's tradition of power-sharing between religious communities.

The Lebanese Civil War (1975 to 1990). A fifteen-year war in which Lebanon's many communities (Maronite Christian, Sunni, Shia, Druze, and Palestinian factions) fought one another, drawing in Syria, Israel, and others. Perhaps 150,000 people died and Beirut was devastated. Details are in the Lebanon chapter.

The Sabra and Shatila massacre (1982). During Israel's 1982 invasion of Lebanon, a Christian militia allied with Israel killed many hundreds, possibly over a thousand, Palestinian and Lebanese civilians in two Beirut refugee camps while Israeli forces controlled the area. An Israeli inquiry found Israel indirectly responsible for not preventing it. It remains one of the war's most infamous events.

The Hama massacre (1982). In the Syrian city of Hama, the government of Hafez al-Assad crushed an uprising by the Muslim Brotherhood, killing many thousands of people and flattening much of the old city. See the Syria chapter.

The Syrian civil war (2011 to 2024). Beginning with the Arab Spring, this war killed roughly half a million people, displaced millions, and ended in 2024 with the fall of the Assad government. It is the deadliest Levantine conflict of the modern era.

The Nakba (1948) and the Arab-Israeli wars. The displacement of most Palestinian Arabs around Israel's founding in 1948, and the repeated wars that followed, are the region's longest-running conflict, covered in the Palestine and Israel chapters.

Don't be confused: many "Lebanon wars" and "Syria wars" exist. Because these small countries have been fought over so often, names repeat. "The Lebanon war" might mean 1975 to 1990 (the civil war), 1982 (Israel's invasion), or 2006 (the Israel-Hezbollah war). When someone uses one of these phrases, it is fair to ask which year they mean.

The Levantine thread

For all the borders, a shared Levantine culture persists: a common Arabic dialect family, overlapping cuisine (the famous mezze table, covered in the food chapter), music, hospitality, and a long habit of many faiths living in the same towns. Politics divided the region; culture keeps reaching across the lines.

Now we go country by country. We begin not in the Levant but at the far south of the Arabian Peninsula, with one of the oldest civilizations and one of today's hardest crises: Yemen. 👉

Yemen

TL;DR. Yemen is the ancient, green corner of Arabia, once so rich from the incense trade that Rome called it "Happy Arabia." For over a thousand years its northern highlands were ruled by Zaydi Shia imams. In the 20th century it split into a conservative north and a Marxist south, united in 1990, then collapsed into the war that began in 2014 between the Houthi movement and a Saudi-led coalition, producing one of the world's worst humanitarian crises. Its culture, from the tower-houses of Sana'a to its distinctive cuisine and song, is among the oldest and most distinctive in the Arab world.

Key takeaways

• Yemen is old and was once wealthy; its poverty is modern, not ancient.
• The deep political thread is the Zaydi (Shia) imamate, which lasted over a millennium until 1962.
• There were two Yemens (north and south) from the 1960s until unification in 1990.
• The current war is a local power struggle layered with a Saudi-Iran proxy contest, not a simple religious fight.
• Sunni (Shafi'i) and Zaydi Shia Yemenis coexisted closely for centuries; the sharp division is recent and political.

Main events at a glance

The land and the deep past

Unlike most of Arabia, the Yemeni highlands catch monsoon rains, which made agriculture and cities possible. Yemenis terraced their mountains into green steps that still climb the slopes today. Ancient Yemen grew rich as the home of frankincense and myrrh, prized across the ancient world, and as the gateway for trade between India and the Mediterranean. The Romans called it Arabia Felix, "Happy" or "Fortunate Arabia," for its wealth and greenery.

Its early kingdoms are legendary, in the literal sense:

• Saba (the biblical Sheba), whose queen visits King Solomon in the Bible and the Quran. Its great Marib Dam irrigated a large population for over a thousand years; its eventual collapse is remembered in tradition as a turning point.
• Himyar, a later kingdom that united much of Yemen. Notably, its rulers adopted monotheism, including a period of Jewish kingship, before the rise of Islam. Christianity and Judaism both had deep roots in Yemen.

Bottom line: Yemen entered history as one of Arabia's most advanced and prosperous civilizations, a fact many Yemenis hold onto with pride.

Empires, the imamate, and the long Zaydi thread

When Islam arrived in the 600s, Yemen converted early and sent fighters into the great Arab conquests. But the story that shaped Yemen most was internal. From around the 890s the Zaydi imamate took hold in the northern highlands. The Zaydis are a branch of Shia Islam, and their imams, religious and political leaders at once, ruled much of the north, on and off, for more than a thousand years, all the way to 1962. Few political traditions anywhere have lasted so long.

The south and the coasts followed a different path, mostly Sunni of the Shafi'i school, with the great port of Aden and the distinctive Hadhramaut valley, whose merchant families spread across the Indian Ocean as far as Indonesia and East Africa.

The split in two, and the wars in detail

Yemen's modern shape came from being divided, then violently reassembled.

North Yemen. The Zaydi imams held the north, briefly contested by the Ottomans, and became independent in 1918. In 1962 army officers overthrew the imamate and declared the Yemen Arab Republic. This triggered a civil war (1962 to 1970), often called Egypt's "Vietnam," in which Egypt sent tens of thousands of troops to back the new republicans while Saudi Arabia backed the royalist supporters of the old imam. The republic survived.

South Yemen. The south, centered on Aden, was taken by Britain in 1839 and run as a strategic colony guarding the route to India. After a guerrilla struggle the British left in 1967, and the south became the People's Democratic Republic of Yemen, the Arab world's only avowedly Marxist state, aligned with the Soviet Union, with a secular, socialist program unusual in the region.

Unification and its breakdown. The two Yemens united in 1990 under the northern leader Ali Abdullah Saleh, who would dominate the country for over three decades. Southern resentment at northern dominance led to a short civil war in 1994, which the north won, leaving a lasting southern grievance that still fuels separatism.

The current war. Saleh was forced out in the 2011 Arab Spring, but the transition failed. The Houthis (formally Ansar Allah), a movement from the far north rooted in a revival of Zaydi identity and anger at the central government, swept into the capital Sana'a in 2014. In 2015 a Saudi-led coalition, backed by the United States and others and alarmed by the Iran-aligned Houthis, launched a major air campaign to restore the recognised government. The result was years of stalemate. The human cost was enormous: hundreds of thousands dead from fighting and, far more, from hunger and disease, with millions pushed toward famine, in what the United Nations repeatedly called one of the world's worst humanitarian crises. A fragile truce from 2022 calmed the fighting without ending the war. Since late 2023 the Houthis have attacked ships in the Red Sea, saying they act for the Palestinians during the Gaza war, drawing US and UK strikes in return.

Who allied with whom in Yemen's wars:

• 1962 to 1970 civil war. Republicans (the new regime) were backed by Egypt under Nasser, with Soviet support. Royalists (the old imam) were backed by Saudi Arabia and Jordan, with covert British help. So this pitted Egypt against Saudi Arabia on Yemeni soil.
• The current war (2014 onward). The Houthis are aligned with Iran. Against them stands a coalition led by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, backed by the United States and Britain (arms and intelligence), nominally to restore the recognised government. Tellingly, former president Saleh first allied with the Houthis in 2014 (his old enemies) to return to power, then turned against them in 2017, and was killed by them days later. The UAE has also backed southern separatists who are technically on the coalition side but want to break away.

Don't be confused: the Yemen war is not simply "Sunni vs Shia" or "Saudi vs Iran." Those labels capture part of it. But it is also a local power struggle among Yemenis (north vs south, Houthis vs rivals, Saleh's shifting alliances), layered with a regional contest in which Saudi Arabia and Iran back opposite sides. Reducing it to one religious binary misses most of the story.

How people lived: daily life and lifestyle

Yemeni life has long been shaped by mountains, tribe, and trade. Outside the cities, most people farmed terraced fields or herded, organised by extended family and tribe, with honour, hospitality, and mediation by elders at the center of social life. Most adult men traditionally wear the jambiya, a curved dagger tucked into the belt, as a mark of status and identity, not usually as a weapon.

The rhythm of the day in much of Yemen is famously built around qat, a mild stimulant leaf chewed through long afternoons in a special sitting room called a mafraj, often on the top floor with the best view. Qat sessions are where Yemenis relax, talk politics, do business, and socialise. They are also a heavy drain on water (qat is thirsty to grow) and on household income, a problem widely acknowledged inside Yemen.

City life centers on spectacular old towns. Sana'a's old city, a UNESCO World Heritage site, is famous for its tall tower houses, some standing for centuries, built of stone and mudbrick and decorated with white gypsum tracery around the windows. Shibam, in the Hadhramaut, is nicknamed "the Manhattan of the desert" for its cluster of mudbrick high-rises, an ancient skyline.

Music, poetry, and the arts

Yemen has a rich and distinctive artistic tradition that is wholly its own. The Sana'a song (al-ghina al-sanaani) is a centuries-old form combining sung classical poetry with the lute, recognised by UNESCO as part of the world's intangible heritage. The oud (and a smaller local lute, the qanbus) accompanies poetry that Yemenis prize highly; poetry is a living social art, used at weddings, in disputes, and in politics. Each region has its own dances, often performed with the jambiya, and the Hadhramaut has its own musical styles carried across the Indian Ocean by its merchant diaspora.

Notable people

• The Queen of Sheba, legendary ruler tied to ancient Saba.
• Queen Arwa al-Sulayhi (ruled in the 11th to 12th centuries), a long-reigning and beloved queen remembered for building works and stable rule, unusual as a woman wielding such power in her era.
• Tawakkol Karman, journalist and activist, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2011 for her role in Yemen's Arab Spring protests; she was the first Arab woman and, at the time, the youngest person to win it.
• Ali Abdullah Saleh, the strongman who ruled for over 30 years and was killed in 2017 amid the current war.

Religion, coexistence, and minorities

Yemenis are overwhelmingly Muslim, split between Sunnis (mostly Shafi'i, concentrated in the south and along the coast) and Zaydi Shia (concentrated in the northern highlands). For centuries the two lived closely intertwined; in many towns they prayed in the same mosques, and intermarriage and shared scholarship were normal. The sharp politicisation of the Sunni-Zaydi line is a modern development, driven by the rise of the Houthi movement and by Saudi-funded Salafi influence pushing in the other direction.

Minorities and their treatment:

• Jews. Yemen had one of the oldest Jewish communities on earth, present for over two thousand years and famous as silversmiths and craftsmen. They lived as a protected but legally lower-status minority. Almost all emigrated to Israel around 1949 to 1950 in an airlift known as Operation Magic Carpet, ending a community of great antiquity; only a tiny handful remain.
• Ismailis. A small Shia community with its own long history in Yemen.
• The Muhamasheen (sometimes called by the older, now offensive term Akhdam). A marginalised group, often of African descent, who have historically faced severe discrimination, doing the lowest-paid work and living on the edge of society. Their mistreatment is an honest blemish on Yemen's social record and has worsened in the war.

Food: Yemen's own table

Yemeni cuisine is bold, smoky, and distinct, increasingly famous abroad through the Yemeni diaspora. It is not interchangeable with its Gulf neighbours; it has its own signature flavours, above all the spice blend hawaij and a love of fenugreek and chili.

• Saltah, widely considered the national dish: a bubbling stew served in a stone pot, crowned with hulba, a frothy whipped fenugreek topping, and a green chili relish, eaten by scooping with flatbread.
• Fahsa, a related shredded-meat stew, also topped with fenugreek froth.
• Mandi and zurbian, fragrant rice and meat slow-cooked in a pit oven, a Yemeni speciality (mandi in particular spread from Yemen across the peninsula).
• Bint al-sahn (also called sabaya), a sweet, many-layered honey bread brushed with ghee and black seeds.
• Aseed, a thick dough ball eaten with broth, and shafut, a flatbread soaked in herbed buttermilk.
• To drink, Yemenis often favour qishr, a hot drink brewed from coffee husks with ginger and spices, alongside the coffee beans Yemen made famous through the port of Mocha.

Everyday life: relationships, family, and home

In Yemen the family, and beyond it the wider clan or tribe, is usually the center of a person's world, and most big decisions are made with the family rather than alone. Marriage has traditionally been arranged or strongly guided by families, often between people who already know each other through kin or neighbourhood. Among younger, more urban, and more educated Yemenis there is more room for couples to have a say in the choice, and engagements increasingly involve the two people getting to know one another, though family approval still matters a great deal. Dating in the Western sense is uncommon, and courtship is generally discreet and family-aware.

Weddings are large, joyful, and often segregated, with men and women celebrating separately, sometimes over several days, with music, poetry, dancing, and feasting. A long-standing custom is the mahr, a marriage gift or dowry given by the groom (or his family) to the bride. It is meant for the bride herself, and the amounts and expectations vary widely by region and family. High mahr and wedding costs are a common worry, and the war has made them harder to meet.

Children are deeply valued, and families are often large, though family size has been shrinking in cities. Childrearing is commonly a shared effort across the extended family, with grandparents, aunts, and uncles all involved. Respect for parents and especially for elders is strongly emphasised, and older relatives are often consulted on important matters. Many households are multigenerational, with several generations living together or close by, and caring for ageing parents at home is widely seen as a duty rather than a burden.

Attitudes to animals are mostly practical. Livestock such as goats, sheep, cattle, and chickens are kept for food and work, and cats are common around homes and markets. Keeping dogs as affectionate house pets is much less usual than in the West, partly for cultural and religious reasons, and working or guard dogs are more typical. Cleanliness is taken seriously, tied closely to the washing required before prayer, and many people take pride in a tidy home and in offering guests a clean, welcoming sitting space even when resources are very limited.

School, work, and the economy

Yemen's school system officially runs through primary and secondary stages, usually starting in the morning and finishing in the early afternoon, with Arabic, the Quran, maths, science, and other subjects. In practice the war has been devastating for education: many schools have been damaged, destroyed, or turned over to other uses, teachers have gone long stretches without pay, and large numbers of children, especially girls, are out of school. Literacy was already uneven before the war, particularly for women and in rural areas, and the conflict has set progress back.

The working day traditionally starts early, partly to beat the midday heat. A famous feature of Yemeni working life is the qat session: many men (and some women, in separate gatherings) wind down work in the early afternoon to chew qat, a mild stimulant leaf, for several hours. These long sessions are social and also where a great deal of business, networking, and informal politics gets done, but they also shorten the productive working day and cost households time and money. The weekend in much of Yemen falls on Friday and Saturday.

The economy is one of the poorest in the region and has been shattered by war. Even before 2014, Yemen leaned heavily on farming (including coffee, fruit, grain, and the water-hungry qat crop) and on remittances sent home by Yemenis working abroad, especially in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf. Oil and gas once provided much of government revenue but output has fallen sharply, and the ports, above all Aden and Hodeidah, are vital lifelines for trade and aid. Years of conflict have brought a collapsing currency, broken public services, mass unemployment, and deep poverty, leaving much of the population dependent on humanitarian assistance.

Language, idioms, and words to know

The language of Yemen is Arabic. Yemenis speak a range of regional dialects often grouped as Yemeni Arabic, considered by many linguists to preserve some older features of the language, while formal or "Modern Standard" Arabic is used in writing, news, and schooling. A few small communities in the far south and on Socotra also speak ancient related languages such as Mehri and Soqotri.

A few real, widely known Arabic proverbs you may hear:

"Al-jar qabl al-dar." ("The neighbour before the house.") Choose good neighbours before you choose the house itself; community matters.

"Yad wahda ma tusaffiq." ("One hand does not clap.") Things get done through cooperation, not alone.

"As-sabr miftah al-faraj." ("Patience is the key to relief.") Endurance eventually brings a way out, a saying that resonates deeply in a country that has endured so much.

A handful of everyday phrases (pronunciation is approximate):

These greetings are used warmly and often; returning a greeting is expected, and the fuller the greeting, the more respect it shows.

Famous places to know

• Old City of Sana'a. The historic heart of the capital, a UNESCO World Heritage site famous for its centuries-old decorated tower houses; one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities on earth.
• Shibam. A walled town in the Hadhramaut nicknamed the "Manhattan of the desert" for its cluster of tall mudbrick tower houses, an astonishing ancient skyline.
• Socotra. A remote island in the Indian Ocean with plants and animals found nowhere else, including the umbrella-shaped dragon's blood tree, a natural wonder and World Heritage site.
• The Hadhramaut. A vast valley region of distinctive mudbrick towns and old merchant families whose traders spread across the Indian Ocean.
• Aden. The great southern port, set around a volcanic crater, long a strategic harbour and gateway to the country.
• Marib. Site of the ancient Sabaean civilization and the legendary Marib Dam, linked in tradition to the Queen of Sheba.
• Zabid. A historic coastal town that was once a major center of Islamic learning, also a World Heritage site.

Fitting in: visiting, impressing people, and being a good citizen

Important safety note. Yemen is currently an active conflict zone with serious security and travel restrictions, and many governments advise against all travel there. Anything below is cultural background, not travel or legal advice. Any practical rules, permits, or restrictions should be checked through official sources such as your own government's travel advisories before relying on them.

If you do meet Yemenis, at home or abroad, a few things go a long way:

• Greet warmly and take your time. Start with "as-salamu alaykum," ask after someone's health and family, and do not rush straight to business. Greetings between men often include a handshake; with a person of the opposite sex, follow their lead and do not offer a handshake unless they do.
• Honour hospitality. Hospitality is a point of deep pride. Guests are often pressed to eat and drink generously, and accepting at least some coffee or tea is a sign of respect. Declining everything outright can seem cold.
• Dress modestly. Modest, loose clothing that covers shoulders and knees is expected, and the standard is stricter for women, who in many areas cover their hair and dress conservatively. When in doubt, dress more conservatively rather than less.
• Mind the home's customs. It is common to remove your shoes when entering a home or a sitting room. Eat and pass food or gifts with the right hand, since the left is considered unclean for these purposes.
• Be sensitive about qat and photos. Qat chewing is normal and social; it is fine to decline politely if offered. Always ask before photographing people, especially women, and avoid photographing anything military, official, or security-related.
• Show respect and listen. Showing genuine interest in Yemen's ancient history, poetry, architecture, and food, and listening rather than judging, earns real goodwill. The war is painful and politically charged, so it is wise to listen more than opine.

Suggested reading, news, and links

Books

• Yemen: The Unknown Arabia by Tim Mackintosh-Smith, a vivid, affectionate travel and history account by a long-time British resident of Sana'a.
• General histories and current-affairs books on modern Yemen and the ongoing war are widely available; look for recent titles from reputable academic and journalistic publishers, since the situation keeps changing.

News

• International outlets such as the BBC, Reuters, and Al Jazeera provide some of the most consistent coverage of Yemen.
• Note that independent local journalism inside Yemen is heavily constrained by the war, with media split along the lines of the rival authorities, so cross-checking sources is wise.

Useful links (stable, well-known sites)

• BBC News country profile: https://www.bbc.com/news (search "Yemen country profile")
• Encyclopaedia Britannica overview: https://www.britannica.com/place/Yemen

Today, and how to talk about it

Yemen in the mid-2020s is divided between Houthi-controlled territory in the north and west (including Sana'a) and a patchwork of other authorities in the south and east, with the humanitarian situation still dire.

If you talk with Yemenis: many are intensely proud of Yemen's ancient heritage as a cradle of Arab civilization and of cities like Sana'a. The war is painful and political; people may hold strong and differing views about the Houthis, the Saudi coalition, and the former government. Leading with curiosity about the culture, the poetry, the architecture, and the food, and listening rather than assigning blame, goes a long way.

Next, the giant to Yemen's north, whose oil and holy cities give it outsized weight: Saudi Arabia. 👉

Saudi Arabia

TL;DR. Saudi Arabia is young as a state (founded 1932) but ancient as a place. It is the birthplace of Islam and holds its two holiest cities, Mecca and Medina. The modern kingdom rests on an 18th-century pact between the Saud family and the strict Wahhabi religious movement, and on the vast oil wealth discovered in 1938, which made it rich, powerful, and a close partner of the United States. Long socially conservative, it is now in a fast, top-down transformation under Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, while remaining an absolute monarchy.

Key takeaways

• Three threads explain Saudi Arabia: the birth of Islam, the Saud-Wahhabi pact of 1744, and oil.
• It is the only country named after its ruling family, the Al Saud.
• Its global weight comes from oil (it leads OPEC) and from custody of Mecca and Medina.
• Its defining alliance is with the United States; its defining rivalry is with Iran.
• It is changing fast socially and economically, but politically it is still an absolute monarchy with tight limits on dissent.

Main events at a glance

The land and the deep past

Most of the Arabian Peninsula is desert and dry plateau. Before Islam it was home to nomadic Bedouin tribes, oasis farmers, and caravan-trading towns. Mecca was already a trading hub and a pilgrimage site centered on a shrine, the Kaaba, before Islam. Life was organised around tribe, honour, hospitality, and the poetry that recorded a tribe's deeds. Two broad cultural regions matter: the conservative interior of Najd (around Riyadh), heartland of the Saud family, and the more cosmopolitan Hejaz of the Red Sea coast (Mecca, Medina, Jeddah), shaped for centuries by pilgrims and merchants from across the Muslim world.

The birth of Islam

This is the peninsula's world-changing chapter. Around 610 CE, in Mecca, the Prophet Muhammad began preaching the message of Islam: submission to one God. Facing hostility, he and his followers moved to Medina in 622 (an event, the Hijra, that starts the Islamic calendar). From Medina the new community grew, and within a few years most of Arabia had accepted Islam. After Muhammad's death in 632, the early caliphs led the explosive expansion described in the background chapter.

Important nuance: the political center of the Islamic world quickly moved away from Arabia, to Damascus and then Baghdad. Arabia remained the spiritual heartland because of Mecca and Medina, but for most of the next thousand years it was a religious destination rather than a center of power, often loosely under Ottoman authority.

The Saud-Wahhabi pact and the making of the kingdom

Modern Saudi Arabia grows from a single alliance made in 1744. A reformist preacher, Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab, called for a return to what he saw as the pure, original Islam, stripped of later practices he considered idolatry. He allied with a local ruler, Muhammad ibn Saud. The deal was simple and durable: the Saud family would provide political and military leadership, and the Wahhabi religious establishment would provide legitimacy and law. That partnership between throne and pulpit is still the backbone of the kingdom.

This first Saudi state expanded and alarmed the Ottomans, who sent their powerful Egyptian viceroy, Muhammad Ali, to crush it in the early 1800s. A second Saudi state rose and fell too. The third and lasting one was built in the early 20th century by Abdulaziz Ibn Saud, who recaptured Riyadh in 1902 and, over thirty years, conquered and unified most of the peninsula, including taking the holy cities of the Hejaz from the rival Hashemite family in 1925. In 1932 he proclaimed the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

Don't be confused: the Saud family and the Hashemites were rivals. The Hashemites of Mecca, who led the WWI Arab Revolt and now rule Jordan, lost Arabia to Ibn Saud in the 1920s. So the family running Jordan today once ruled Mecca, until the Saudis took it.

Oil changes everything

In 1938, vast oil reserves were discovered. After World War II, a defining bargain took shape, sealed at a 1945 meeting between Ibn Saud and US President Roosevelt: a close partnership with the United States, in which America got reliable oil and Saudi Arabia got security guarantees. Oil wealth, channeled through the state company Aramco, transformed a poor desert kingdom into one of the richest and most influential states in the world, the central player in the OPEC oil cartel and a financial heavyweight across the Muslim world.

The kingdom used some of that wealth to spread its strict Wahhabi/Salafi form of Islam abroad, funding mosques and schools internationally, a policy with long consequences for global Islam that the country has more recently pulled back from.

Key conflicts and alliances, in detail

Saudi Arabia rarely fights directly, but it has been central to the region's alignments:

• 1990 to 1991, the Gulf War. After Iraq's Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait, Saudi Arabia hosted a huge US-led coalition to reverse it. The kingdom and the West were allied against Iraq. The presence of Western, non-Muslim troops near the holy cities enraged radicals, most famously the Saudi-born Osama bin Laden, planting seeds of al-Qaeda's later turn against both the US and the Saudi monarchy.
• 2001. Fifteen of the nineteen September 11 hijackers were Saudi citizens, as was bin Laden, straining the US relationship and prompting hard questions about the export of extremism.
• Saudi Arabia vs Iran (the central modern rivalry). Since Iran's 1979 revolution, Sunni-led, Arab, US-aligned Saudi Arabia and Shia-led, Persian, anti-US Iran have competed for regional leadership. They rarely clash directly; instead they back opposite sides in Yemen (Saudis vs Iran-aligned Houthis), Syria (Saudis backed some rebels, Iran backed Assad), and Lebanon (Saudis vs Iran's Hezbollah).
• 2018, the Khashoggi killing. Saudi agents killed the dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, drawing global condemnation and briefly isolating the crown prince.
• 2023, détente. In a China-brokered deal, Saudi Arabia restored relations with Iran, signalling a turn toward de-escalation, and it has weighed possible normalisation with Israel, talks complicated by the Gaza war.

How people lived: daily life and lifestyle

Saudi society blends deep Bedouin and tribal heritage with one of the world's fastest-modernising economies. Family and tribe remain central; the majlis, a sitting room where men gather to talk, settle matters, and receive guests, is a core institution, and hospitality is a serious value, expressed above all in the ritual of serving cardamom-scented Arabic coffee (qahwa) with dates. Heritage pastimes endure and are prized: falconry, camel husbandry and racing, and horse breeding.

Religion structures the calendar and the day: the five daily prayers, the fasting month of Ramadan, and the rhythms around the hajj and umrah pilgrimages that bring millions of visitors to Mecca and Medina. Traditional dress is the white thobe and headscarf (ghutra) for men and the black abaya for women, though dress rules have relaxed. For decades public life was tightly restricted, with no cinemas and strict gender separation enforced by the religious police; since around 2017 much of this has loosened, with cinemas, concerts, mixed entertainment, women driving, and a booming domestic tourism and events scene. Daily life differs by region: cosmopolitan Jeddah on the coast has long been more relaxed than conservative Riyadh in the interior.

Music, poetry, and the arts

Saudi culture is, above all, a culture of the spoken and sung word. Nabati poetry, classical Bedouin Arabic verse, is enormously popular, with televised poetry contests drawing huge audiences and big prizes. The national folk dance is the ardah, a stirring sword dance performed in rows to drums and chanted poetry, often at national celebrations. Regional folk music includes the mizmar (a reed instrument) and Hejazi song traditions shaped by the pilgrim cultures of the Red Sea. After the recent opening, a modern entertainment and arts scene, concerts, film, and festivals, has grown quickly.

Notable people

• Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab, the 18th-century reformer behind Wahhabism.
• Abdulaziz Ibn Saud, founder of the modern kingdom.
• King Faisal (ruled 1964 to 1975), a modernising and influential monarch assassinated by a nephew.
• Mohammed bin Salman (MBS), the powerful crown prince driving the current transformation.

Religion, coexistence, and minorities

Saudi Arabia is officially Sunni Muslim of the Wahhabi/Salafi tradition, and Islam is woven into the state and law. As custodian of Mecca and Medina and host of the annual hajj, it holds a special standing among the world's Muslims.

Coexistence with other faiths has historically been narrow inside the kingdom. Public practice of any religion other than Islam is not permitted, and there are no churches or temples, though the recent reforms have eased daily life for the millions of foreign workers (many of them Christian, Hindu, or of other faiths) who make up a large share of the population.

Minorities and their treatment:

• Shia Muslims form a significant minority, concentrated in the oil-rich Eastern Province, with the Ismaili community around Najran in the south. Saudi Shia have long reported discrimination in jobs, religious freedom, and political voice, and the community saw protests and a harsh crackdown during the 2011 to 2012 unrest. Their status is a real and sensitive fault line.
• Foreign workers, who do much of the country's labour, have faced criticism over the kafala sponsorship system, which has tied workers to employers and led to abuses; reforms have been promised and partly enacted.

Food: Saudi Arabia's own table

Saudi cuisine is its own tradition, built on rice, lamb and chicken, dates, and warm spices, with strong regional differences between Najd, the Hejaz, and the south.

• Kabsa, the national dish: spiced rice (with cardamom, cloves, saffron, dried lime) cooked with meat, often served from a shared platter.
• Mandi, meat and rice cooked in a pit oven, a beloved staple.
• Jareesh and marqoq, hearty Najdi dishes of crushed wheat and thin dough with meat and vegetables.
• Saleeg, a creamy Hejazi rice porridge with meat, and mutabbaq, a stuffed, pan-fried savoury pastry popular in the Hejaz.
• Dates in dozens of varieties, eaten daily and offered to every guest, and Arabic coffee spiced with cardamom, the centerpiece of hospitality.

Everyday life: relationships, family, and home

Family is the heart of Saudi life, and ties of extended family and tribe still carry real weight, especially in the interior. Traditionally, marriages were introduced and arranged through families, and a young man and woman would meet under family supervision. A core part of any marriage is the mahr, a dowry or gift the groom gives to the bride (it is hers to keep). Weddings are large, festive, and historically gender-separate, with men and women celebrating in different halls. These patterns still hold widely, but they are loosening: more people now choose their own partners with family blessing, and the strict gender separation of public life has eased a great deal since around 2017.

Children are raised within close, often large extended families, with grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins all part of daily life, and respect for elders is taught early and taken seriously. Religion is woven through the day for most people: the five daily prayers set the rhythm of time, and faith shapes the calendar, food, dress, and manners.

On animals: attitudes differ from many Western norms. Dogs are often viewed with some caution and, in conservative readings, as ritually unclean, so they are less commonly kept as indoor pets (working and hunting dogs, like salukis, are an exception), while cats are widely tolerated and liked, and the falcon holds a place of pride in the culture. Cleanliness is closely tied to faith: Muslims perform wudu, a ritual washing of the hands, face, arms, and feet, before prayer, and personal hygiene is treated as part of religious life.

School, work, and the economy

Schooling is free and widespread, and education is strongly valued; for decades the government has funded large numbers of students to study abroad on scholarships. Schools have traditionally been gender-separate. One thing visitors notice: the weekend is Friday and Saturday, with Friday the main day of communal prayer, so the working week runs Sunday to Thursday.

Work life pauses briefly for the daily prayers, when many shops and offices close for a short time. The public sector has long employed a large share of Saudi citizens, while a great deal of private-sector and manual work has been done by foreign workers from across Asia, Africa, and the Arab world, who make up a large part of the population.

The economy is built on oil. Saudi Arabia holds some of the world's largest reserves, its state company Aramco is one of the most valuable companies on earth, and the kingdom leads the OPEC group of oil exporters. This made it a high-income country. Because oil will not last forever, the government's Vision 2030 plan, driven by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, aims to diversify into tourism, technology, entertainment, mining, and finance, funded partly through the country's huge sovereign wealth fund.

Language, idioms, and words to know

The language is Arabic, the language of the Quran. Everyday speech uses dialects: broadly Najdi Arabic in the central interior around Riyadh and the Gulf, and Hejazi Arabic on the Red Sea coast around Jeddah and Mecca, which was shaped by centuries of pilgrims and merchants. Standard (formal) Arabic is used in writing, news, and religion.

A few real, well-known Arabic proverbs and their meanings:

• "Al-sabr miftah al-faraj": "Patience is the key to relief." Endurance leads to a way out.
• "Al-ittihad quwwa": "In unity there is strength."

Useful phrases (simple pronunciation in brackets):

• as-salamu alaykum (as-sa-LAM-u a-LAY-kum): "peace be upon you," the standard greeting; the reply is "wa alaykum as-salam."
• shukran (SHOOK-ran): "thank you."
• inshallah (in-SHAH-lah): "God willing." It is said when speaking of the future. It can mean a sincere hope that something happens, and at other times it is a soft, polite way of saying "we'll see" without a firm promise.

A famous saying often linked to Bedouin and broader Arab tradition captures the value of hospitality and kinship: "I against my brother, my brother and I against my cousin, my cousin and I against the stranger." It describes loyalty radiating outward from family to tribe.

Famous places to know

• Mecca and the Kaaba: Islam's holiest city and the cube-shaped shrine that Muslims worldwide face in prayer; destination of the hajj pilgrimage.
• Medina: the city the Prophet Muhammad moved to in 622, home to his mosque and tomb, Islam's second holiest city.
• AlUla and Hegra (Mada'in Salih): a stunning desert region of sandstone cliffs, ancient rock art, and the carved Nabataean tombs of Hegra, the country's first UNESCO World Heritage Site.
• Diriyah: the ancestral mud-brick home of the Al Saud near Riyadh, the birthplace of the first Saudi state, now restored as a heritage destination.
• Riyadh: the modern capital in the heart of Najd, a fast-growing city of business, government, and new museums and entertainment.
• Jeddah's old town (Al-Balad): the historic Red Sea port with distinctive coral-stone houses and carved wooden balconies, long the gateway for pilgrims.
• The Empty Quarter (Rub al-Khali): one of the largest sand deserts on earth, a vast sea of dunes spanning the south of the peninsula.

Fitting in: visiting, impressing people, and being a good citizen

A warm greeting matters, and hospitality is central: if you are offered Arabic coffee (qahwa) and dates, accepting them is part of the ritual and a sign of respect (a gentle shake of the small cup signals you have had enough). Dress modestly; women no longer must wear the black abaya but should still cover shoulders and knees, and men should avoid shorts and sleeveless tops in public. Eat and pass food with the right hand. Be mindful of prayer times, when shops briefly close, and be especially considerate during Ramadan, when eating, drinking, or smoking in public during daylight is avoided.

One firm point: Mecca and Medina are holy cities that non-Muslims may not enter. Respect this without exception. Ask before photographing people, especially women, and avoid photographing government or military sites.

To make a good impression, show genuine interest in Arabian heritage, poetry, falconry, and the country's rapid changes, be patient and unhurried, and keep conversation away from sensitive political and royal topics unless your host raises them.

Saudi Arabia has recently opened to tourism, and many visitors can now obtain an e-visa online. Rules have liberalized a great deal, but conservative norms remain in places, and they continue to change quickly, so check current, official guidance before you travel. This is general etiquette, not legal advice.

Suggested reading, news, and links

Books

• Madawi al-Rasheed, "A History of Saudi Arabia," a widely cited scholarly overview.
• For deeper reading, look for reputable histories of the kingdom, the Al Saud family, and the modern Vision 2030 era from established academic and journalistic publishers.

News

• International outlets such as the BBC and Reuters offer independent coverage.
• Saudi-based, English-language outlets like Arab News and the Saudi Gazette are useful for local perspective, but note they are state-linked and not fully independent.

Links

• The official tourism site, Visit Saudi (visitsaudi.com).
• The BBC country profile (bbc.com).
• Britannica's Saudi Arabia entry (britannica.com).

Today, and how to talk about it

Saudi Arabia in the mid-2020s is a society in fast, top-down transition: economically ambitious, socially loosening, regionally assertive, and still an absolute monarchy with tight limits on dissent.

If you talk with Saudis: religion and the holy cities are deeply meaningful, so treat them with respect. Many younger Saudis are proud of the rapid changes and happy to discuss them; politics and the royal family are more sensitive. Hospitality is a genuine value, accepting coffee and dates is part of the ritual, and showing real interest in Arabian heritage, poetry, and falconry is always welcome.

From the peninsula we move to the land at the center of the region's longest conflict. The next two chapters, Palestine and Israel, are best read together. 👉

Palestine

This chapter and the next, Israel, describe the same small piece of land from the center of the world's most closely watched conflict. They are written to be read together, but each stands on its own, including its own distinct culture and cuisine. This book does not tell you who is right. It lays out the documented history and the honestly held, deeply opposed narratives, and marks clearly where facts are disputed.

TL;DR. Palestine is the homeland of the Palestinian Arab people, with deep Muslim and Christian roots in a land sacred to three religions. Under Ottoman then British rule it had an Arab majority. The rise of Jewish nationalism (Zionism) and the founding of Israel in 1948 led to the displacement of most Palestinians, an event they call the Nakba (catastrophe). Since 1967 Palestinians in the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Gaza have lived under Israeli occupation. Today Palestinians are divided politically between Fatah (West Bank) and Hamas (Gaza), have no fully sovereign state, and the conflict remains unresolved and often violent.

Key takeaways

• Palestinians are an Arab people, mostly Sunni Muslim with an ancient Christian minority, with a strong identity tied to the land.
• 1948 (the Nakba) and 1967 (occupation) are the two hinge dates.
• Palestinians are politically split: Fatah runs the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank; Hamas governs Gaza.
• The core dispute is land: occupation, settlements, refugees, and the status of Jerusalem.
• Read alongside the Israel chapter to hold both narratives at once.

Main events at a glance

Don't be confused: this is contested ground, including the words. Even basic terms are political. The same 1948 war is the "War of Independence" to most Israelis and the "Nakba" to Palestinians. This chapter gives both labels and attributes contested claims rather than asserting one side's framing.

The land and the deep past

The land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean has been inhabited and fought over for thousands of years. Its layers include Canaanites and the coastal Philistines (whose name is the root of "Palestine"), the Israelite and Judean kingdoms central to Jewish history, Roman Judea (the setting for the life of Jesus and the birth of Christianity), Byzantine Christian rule, then the Islamic conquest of 638 CE. Jerusalem became holy to Islam too: the Al-Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock were built on the hill Jews revere as the Temple Mount. Then came centuries of Muslim rule, the Crusader interludes, and finally the Ottomans. The key point: this is a land sacred to three religions at once, with a long continuous presence of multiple peoples.

The rise of two national movements

Under the Ottomans, the area that became Mandate Palestine had an Arab majority, mostly Muslim with a significant Christian minority, plus a long-standing Jewish community, especially in Jerusalem. In the late 1800s two forces converged: growing Arab national feeling, and Zionism, the movement for a Jewish national home, which led to rising Jewish immigration. Both peoples came to see the same land as their national home. That is the root of the conflict. (Zionism's story is told in the Israel chapter.)

The British Mandate and 1948

After World War I, Britain governed Palestine under a League of Nations mandate, having made overlapping promises: the Balfour Declaration (1917) supporting a Jewish national home, while also pledging not to harm the existing communities. As Jewish immigration rose, Arab fears of displacement grew into the Arab revolt of 1936 to 1939. In 1947 the UN proposed partition; Jewish leaders largely accepted, Arab leaders rejected it as unjust to the Arab majority, and civil war broke out.

On 14 May 1948 Israel declared independence, and neighbouring Arab states invaded. For Palestinians the war was the Nakba: around 700,000 Palestinian Arabs, more than half the Arab population, fled or were expelled, becoming refugees, many never allowed to return; hundreds of villages were depopulated. Whether the flight was mainly under fire or by organised expulsion is debated by historians, but the scale of displacement is not. No Arab state of Palestine was created. Instead the West Bank (including East Jerusalem) came under Jordanian control and the Gaza Strip under Egyptian control.

1967 and occupation

In the Six-Day War of 1967, Israel captured the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Gaza. From that point, Palestinians in those territories have lived under Israeli military occupation. Israel began building settlements for Jewish citizens in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem. Most of the world, through repeated UN resolutions, considers these settlements illegal under international law; Israel disputes this. The status of this land is the core of the dispute today.

The Palestinian movement, conflicts, and alliances

Palestinian politics and the wars around it have involved a shifting web of allies. Who stood with whom:

• 1948. Several Arab states (Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Iraq, Lebanon) invaded in the name of the Palestinians, but they were poorly coordinated and pursued their own interests; Jordan, for instance, took and kept the West Bank.
• The PLO, founded in 1964 and long led by Yasser Arafat, became the main voice of Palestinian nationalism, first through armed struggle (including attacks many countries classified as terrorism), later through diplomacy. Based in Jordan, then Lebanon, the PLO allied with Lebanese leftist and Muslim factions during the Lebanese Civil War against the Christian militias, which is part of why that war drew in Israel and Syria (see the Lebanon chapter).
• Black September (1970). When the PLO challenged the monarchy in Jordan, the Jordanian army expelled it, a reminder that Arab states and the Palestinians were not always allies.
• The intifadas. The First Intifada (1987 to 1993) was a largely grassroots uprising against occupation. The Second Intifada (2000 to 2005), after peace talks collapsed, was far bloodier, with suicide bombings and heavy Israeli military operations.
• The Oslo Accords (1993 to 1995) saw the PLO and Israel recognise each other and created the Palestinian Authority (PA) to govern parts of the territories, meant as a step toward two states. The process stalled.
• The split. In 2006 the Islamist movement Hamas won Palestinian elections, beating Arafat's secular Fatah. After fighting in 2007 the territories split: Hamas governs Gaza, the Fatah-led PA administers parts of the West Bank. They remain divided, with very different foreign alignments: Hamas is backed by Iran and parts of the "axis of resistance," with political support from Qatar and Turkey; the PA is aligned with the West and works (uneasily) with Israel on security.

The Gaza wars. Israel and Egypt imposed a blockade on Hamas-run Gaza, citing security; critics called it collective punishment of two million people. Wars followed in 2008 to 2009, 2012, 2014, and 2021. On 7 October 2023, Hamas led a surprise attack into southern Israel, killing about 1,200 people, most of them civilians, and taking some 240 hostages. Israel responded with a massive campaign in Gaza that killed tens of thousands of Palestinians (figures from Gaza's health ministry, contested by Israel but cited by the UN), caused mass displacement and a severe humanitarian crisis, and drew international legal cases. As of this book's writing in early 2026 the aftermath is still unfolding.

Don't be confused: Hamas, Fatah, the PA, and the PLO are different. Fatah is the secular nationalist party that dominates the PA and the PLO (the umbrella that signed Oslo). Hamas is a separate Islamist movement that governs Gaza, is not part of the PLO, and is designated a terrorist organisation by Israel, the US, the EU, and others. "The Palestinians" are not a single political bloc.

How people lived: daily life and lifestyle

Palestinian identity is deeply rooted in the land and in village life. For generations most Palestinians were farmers, and the olive harvest each autumn remains a central seasonal ritual, almost sacred, with olive oil at the heart of the kitchen and the economy. The land also shaped crafts: tatreez, the intricate cross-stitch embroidery on dresses, traditionally carried village-specific patterns, so a woman's dress could signal where she was from. The keffiyeh, the black-and-white checked scarf, became a global symbol of Palestinian identity.

Today Palestinian life is fragmented by geography: villages and cities of the West Bank under occupation with checkpoints and settlements; the densely crowded, blockaded Gaza Strip; Palestinian citizens inside Israel; and a vast worldwide refugee diaspora, many still in camps in Lebanon, Syria, and Jordan. Family, hospitality, education, and memory of ancestral villages are powerful threads holding this scattered people together.

Music, poetry, and the arts

Palestinians have a strong artistic culture, much of it bound up with identity and resistance. The dabke, a line dance with stamping footwork, is performed at every wedding and celebration. Mahmoud Darwish is revered as the national poet, his verse known across the Arab world. The novelist Ghassan Kanafani and the scholar Edward Said (author of Orientalism) shaped how Palestinians and the wider world think about the cause. The cartoonist Naji al-Ali created Handala, the small barefoot refugee boy seen from behind, an enduring symbol. In music, the oud ensemble Le Trio Joubran, the hip-hop group DAM, and the singer Mohammed Assaf, a young man from Gaza whose 2013 win on Arab Idol became a moment of national pride, are all distinctly Palestinian voices.

Notable people

• Yasser Arafat, longtime PLO leader and symbol of the national cause.
• Mahmoud Darwish, the national poet.
• Edward Said, the influential literary scholar and public intellectual.
• Hanan Ashrawi, scholar and prominent peace negotiator and spokesperson.
• Mohammed Assaf, the singer who became a cultural icon.

Religion, coexistence, and minorities

Palestinians are mostly Sunni Muslim, with a small but historically vital Christian minority concentrated around Bethlehem, Ramallah, Jerusalem, and Nazareth, among the oldest Christian communities on earth. For centuries Muslim and Christian Palestinians shared towns, language, customs, and the national movement; Christians have been prominent leaders in Palestinian politics and culture. Their numbers have fallen sharply through emigration driven by conflict and economic hardship, a loss felt across Palestinian society. A tiny ancient community, the Samaritans, who follow an early offshoot of the Israelite religion, still lives near Nablus on Mount Gerizim, maintaining ties across both Palestinian and Israeli societies.

Food: Palestine's own table

Palestinian cuisine is its own celebrated tradition, built on olive oil, wheat, sumac, and the produce of the land, with distinct regional styles between the West Bank, the Galilee, and Gaza.

• Musakhan, often called the national dish: roasted chicken seasoned heavily with sumac and onions, served over taboon flatbread soaked in olive oil.
• Maqluba ("upside-down"), a layered pot of rice, fried vegetables, and meat that is flipped onto a platter to serve.
• Knafeh Nabulsiyeh, the famous hot cheese pastry of Nablus, soaked in syrup and crowned with orange-tinted shredded pastry, a point of deep Palestinian pride.
• Za'atar, the wild-herb and sumac blend eaten daily with olive oil and bread, and freekeh, smoky roasted green wheat used in hearty dishes.
• Gaza's distinct, fiery cuisine: dishes like sumagiyya (a sumac-and-chard stew), rummaniyya (lentils with pomegranate), and zibdiyit gambari (a spicy clay-pot shrimp dish), reflecting the coast and a love of chili and dill.

Everyday life: relationships, family, and home

Family is the heart of Palestinian society, and the extended family matters far more than the household alone. Many people belong to a larger clan, the hamula, a network of relatives that can shape support, reputation, and sometimes politics. People meet through family, neighbourhoods, study, and work, and although personal choice has grown, especially among educated younger people and in the diaspora, marriages are still often guided by the families on both sides. Customs vary widely between conservative villages, big cities like Ramallah, refugee camps, and Christian communities. A typical path runs through an engagement visit, in which the man's family formally asks for the woman's hand, followed by agreement on the mahr (a marriage gift or payment from the groom to the bride, set out in the marriage contract). Weddings tend to be large, joyful, and public, with feasting, music, and the dabke line dance described earlier.

Children are raised inside this thick web of relatives, with strong bonds to grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins. Respect for elders is expected, and it is common for several generations to share one home or live close together, with older parents cared for by their children rather than moving away. The family home, the land, and especially the olive tree carry deep meaning, standing for roots, continuity, and belonging; losing access to family land is felt as a wound, not just an economic loss. Hospitality is a point of honour, and a guest is almost always offered coffee or tea. As in much of the region, pets are kept less commonly than in many Western countries, though attitudes are changing in cities; cats are tolerated around homes, and dogs are more often working animals than household companions. Cleanliness is valued, and for observant Muslims wudu, the ritual washing of hands, face, arms, and feet before the five daily prayers, is part of everyday routine.

All of this is shaped by hard realities. In the West Bank, checkpoints, the separation barrier, and settlement growth can split families and make ordinary visits slow or uncertain. In Gaza, years of blockade and repeated wars have battered homes, livelihoods, and family life. Many families also live divided across the West Bank, Gaza, Israel, and the diaspora, so phone calls and rare reunions carry great weight.

School, work, and the economy

Palestinians place a very high cultural value on education, often seen as the one form of wealth that cannot be taken away, and literacy rates are high despite decades of disruption. Children attend primary and secondary school, run by the Palestinian Authority, by UNRWA (the UN agency for Palestinian refugees) in many camps, and by private and religious schools. Secondary study builds toward the tawjihi, the national exams whose results heavily shape university options and are a source of family pride. There are well-regarded universities, including Birzeit near Ramallah, An-Najah in Nablus, and Bethlehem University, and Palestinians are widely educated as a people, with a strong skilled and professional diaspora working across the Gulf, Europe, and the Americas. War and closures, however, repeatedly interrupt schooling, and in Gaza the education system has been severely damaged.

Working life looks much like elsewhere, with a weekend that commonly falls on Friday (the Muslim day of communal prayer) and sometimes Saturday or Sunday, especially around Christian areas. The economy is small and under heavy strain. Movement restrictions, occupation, settlement expansion, and the Gaza blockade limit trade, travel to work, and investment, and much of the territory's economy depends on Israel, on foreign aid, and on remittances sent home by relatives abroad. Key sectors include agriculture (olives and olive oil above all, plus fruit, vegetables, and herbs), services, small manufacturing and crafts, construction, and tourism around the holy sites. Many West Bank Palestinians also work inside Israel or in settlements when permits allow. Unemployment is high, particularly among the young and especially in Gaza, where the humanitarian situation has at times been catastrophic. These hardships are real and well documented.

Language, idioms, and words to know

The everyday language is Arabic, specifically the Palestinian variety of the wider Levantine dialect spoken across the eastern Mediterranean; formal writing and news use Modern Standard Arabic. Many Palestinians also speak English, and those who are citizens of Israel or who have lived there commonly speak Hebrew.

A few useful phrases, written the way they sound:

• as-salamu alaykum (as-sa-LAA-mu a-LAY-kum): "peace be upon you," the standard greeting; the reply is wa alaykum as-salam.
• shukran (SHOOK-ran): "thank you."
• yallah (YAL-lah): "let's go" or "come on," used constantly.
• inshallah (in-SHAA-llah): "God willing," said about anything hoped for in future.
• ahlan wa sahlan (AH-lan wa SAH-lan): "welcome."

Some widely known Arabic proverbs and their meanings:

• Al-jaar qabl al-daar: "the neighbour before the house," meaning choose good neighbours, because who is around you matters more than the home itself.
• Al-sabr miftah al-faraj: "patience is the key to relief," a common saying that hardship passes for those who endure.

The beloved national poet Mahmoud Darwish wrote often of exile, memory, and the land. One of his best-known poems opens with the line, "Record! I am an Arab" (from "Identity Card"), a verse widely quoted as a statement of Palestinian presence and dignity.

Famous places to know

• Jerusalem (Arabic Al-Quds, "the Holy"): claimed as a capital by Palestinians, its walled Old City holds Al-Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock, the third holiest site in Islam, and the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, revered by Christians as the site of Jesus's crucifixion and resurrection.
• Bethlehem: just south of Jerusalem, the traditional birthplace of Jesus and home to the Church of the Nativity, a major Christian pilgrimage site.
• Hebron (Arabic Al-Khalil): home to the Ibrahimi Mosque / Cave of the Patriarchs, tomb of Abraham, sacred to Muslims and Jews and a flashpoint of the conflict.
• Nablus: a historic West Bank city famed for its old town, soap-making tradition, and the cheese pastry knafeh.
• Ramallah: the de facto administrative and cultural centre of the West Bank, seat of the Palestinian Authority and a hub of business and nightlife.
• Jericho: near the Jordan River, often described as one of the oldest continuously inhabited towns on earth.
• Gaza: an ancient port city and the heart of the densely populated, blockaded Gaza Strip, devastated by repeated wars.

Fitting in: visiting, impressing people, and being a good citizen

Palestinians are widely known for warm hospitality, and a visitor will quickly be offered coffee, tea, or food. Accepting at least a little is a sign of respect; refusing everything can seem cold. Bitter cardamom-scented Arabic coffee and sweet tea are part of welcoming a guest. Modest dress is appreciated, especially near religious sites and in more conservative towns and villages: covering shoulders and knees is sensible, and women may carry a scarf for mosques and churches. As across the region, eat and pass food with the right hand. During the holy month of Ramadan, many Muslims fast from dawn to sunset, so avoid eating, drinking, or smoking in public during daylight out of courtesy.

Because this is a place of deep conflict, be thoughtful and sensitive. Listen more than you pronounce on politics, treat people's experiences of displacement and life under occupation with respect, and avoid careless or provocative remarks. Photographing soldiers, checkpoints, or military sites can cause real problems, so ask and use judgment. Travel itself is heavily shaped by Israeli-controlled access: entry, checkpoints, and permits affect where and when you can go, conditions can change quickly, and the situation in Gaza in particular has been severe. Always check current official government travel advice and security guidance before any trip. None of this is legal advice.

Suggested reading, news, and links

Books

• Rashid Khalidi, The Hundred Years' War on Palestine, a widely read history from a Palestinian perspective.
• Works by and about Edward Said, including his memoir Out of Place and his influential study Orientalism, for the intellectual story behind the cause.
• Fiction and essays by Ghassan Kanafani and the poetry of Mahmoud Darwish give a literary window into Palestinian life and exile.

News

• International outlets such as the BBC, Reuters, and Al Jazeera all cover the region heavily. Reading more than one helps balance perspectives.
• Local Palestinian outlets exist as well, but note that media on all sides of this conflict is politically contested, so compare sources rather than relying on one.

Useful links

• The BBC publishes country and region profiles with background and timelines.
• Encyclopaedia Britannica (britannica.com) has detailed, regularly updated entries on Palestine, Gaza, the West Bank, and the wider conflict.

Today, and how to talk about it

There is no Palestinian state with full sovereignty; the West Bank is under occupation with expanding settlements and divided governance, and Gaza has been devastated by war. A majority of UN member states recognise a State of Palestine, though several key Western powers historically have not. Debate continues over a two-state solution versus other outcomes.

If you talk with Palestinians: this is a matter of home, family, and dispossession, not abstract politics, and feelings run deep. Listen first. Recognising the human reality of displacement and life under occupation, while not denying Israelis' own history and fears, is the respectful starting point. Read the Israel chapter next so you hold both stories at once. 👉

Israel

This chapter is the companion to Palestine. The two describe one land and one conflict from opposite sides, and each stands on its own, including its own distinct culture and cuisine. Read together, they are meant to leave you holding both narratives at once, which is the only honest way to understand the place. As before, this book documents and attributes rather than judging.

TL;DR. Israel is the world's only Jewish-majority state, founded in 1948 as the realisation of Zionism, the modern movement for Jewish self-determination in the Jewish people's ancestral land, intensified by centuries of persecution and the Holocaust. It survived a war at its birth and several more, made peace with Egypt and Jordan, and built a prosperous, high-tech democracy. It also governs millions of Palestinians without citizenship in territories captured in 1967, the unresolved core of its conflict with the Palestinians and much of the Arab and Muslim world.

Key takeaways

• Israel is rooted in the ancient and continuous Jewish connection to the land, and in modern Zionism as a response to antisemitism and the Holocaust.
• 1948 (founding and survival) and 1967 (the territories and occupation) are the hinge dates.
• Its central alliance is with the United States; its central modern threat, in its own view, is Iran and its allied movements.
• It is a real democracy for its citizens and a diverse society, while also controlling Palestinians who are not citizens, two facts that must be held together.
• Read alongside the Palestine chapter.

Main events at a glance

The deep past and the Jewish connection to the land

Jewish history is rooted in this land. Ancient Israelite and Judean kingdoms existed here, with Jerusalem and its Temple as the religious center. After revolts against Rome, the Temple was destroyed (70 CE) and most Jews were dispersed into a long worldwide diaspora. Yet a Jewish presence in the land continued in every century, and the hope of return remained central to Jewish prayer and identity for nearly two thousand years. This unbroken attachment is the foundation of the modern Israeli claim. (The shared ancient history of the land itself is told in the Palestine chapter.)

Zionism: why a modern state

Modern Zionism arose in late-19th-century Europe, above all as a response to relentless antisemitism: pogroms in the Russian Empire, the Dreyfus affair in France, and the conviction, voiced by Theodor Herzl, that Jews would be safe only with a state of their own. The movement chose the ancestral land of Israel, then Ottoman (later British) Palestine. Waves of Jewish immigration (aliyah) followed. The case became overwhelming, in Zionist eyes and to much of the world, after the Holocaust, in which Nazi Germany murdered about six million European Jews.

Don't be confused: Zionism, Judaism, and Israel are not identical. Judaism is the religion. Zionism is a modern political movement for Jewish self-determination in this land. Israel is the resulting state. Most Jews support Israel's existence, but Jews hold a wide range of views on its policies, and some religious Jews historically opposed Zionism. Criticism of Israeli government policy is not by itself the same thing as antisemitism, though the line is hotly debated.

1948: independence and survival

When the UN proposed partition in 1947 (accepted by Jewish leaders, rejected by Arab leaders), war followed. On 14 May 1948, Israel declared independence; the surrounding Arab states invaded. Israel survived and expanded beyond the partition lines in what Israelis call the War of Independence. The same events are the Nakba for Palestinians, who suffered mass displacement, as the previous chapter details.

A parallel displacement followed in the other direction: in the years after 1948, most of the roughly 800,000 Jews of Arab and Muslim countries left or were forced out, and the majority resettled in Israel. Israel today is in large part a country of refugees and their descendants from both Europe and the Middle East.

The wars and the alliances behind them

Israel's wars each had clear coalitions. Who stood with whom:

The 1967 victory is the origin of the occupation of the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem, the central issue with the Palestinians. The 1973 war shocked Israel and opened the door to peace with Egypt. The 1982 war is a striking example of how alliances here cross religious lines: a Jewish state allied with Lebanese Christian militias against Palestinian and Syrian forces (see the Lebanon chapter).

From war to (partial) peace

• 1979: the US-brokered Camp David accords brought peace with Egypt, the first between Israel and an Arab state, returning Sinai. Egypt's president Sadat was later assassinated by extremists for making peace.
• 1993 to 1995: the Oslo Accords with the PLO created mutual recognition and the Palestinian Authority, the peace process's high point. In 1994 Israel made peace with Jordan. In 1995 prime minister Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated by a Jewish extremist opposed to the accords, a severe blow.
• 2005: Israel withdrew its settlers and soldiers from Gaza; after Hamas took over in 2007, Israel and Egypt imposed a blockade, and repeated wars followed.
• 2020: the US-brokered Abraham Accords normalised relations with the UAE, Bahrain, Morocco, and Sudan, a major shift, though they did not resolve the Palestinian question.

Iran, Hezbollah, and the security view

From the Israeli perspective, the central modern threat is Iran and its allied armed movements, especially Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza, the so-called "axis of resistance." Israel sees itself as a small country surrounded by hostile forces, some sworn to its destruction, which shapes its emphasis on military strength and deterrence. Critics counter that this framing can be used to justify the occupation and actions that harm civilians. Both points belong in the honest picture. The Hamas-led attack of 7 October 2023 and the ensuing Gaza war, plus a 2024 war with Hezbollah, are covered from the Palestinian and Lebanese sides in their chapters; for Israelis, October 2023 was a national trauma, the deadliest day for Jews since the Holocaust in many people's eyes.

How people lived: daily life and lifestyle

Israeli life is shaped by diversity, religion, and the rhythm of the Shabbat (the Saturday day of rest, when much of the country pauses). Society spans secular Jews, modern-religious Jews, the rapidly growing ultra-Orthodox (Haredi) communities who live a deeply traditional life, and Arab citizens, each with very different daily worlds. Early Zionists built kibbutzim, collective farming communities that became a national symbol, though most have since privatised. Nearly all young Jewish (and Druze) citizens do military service, a shared formative experience. Hebrew, a language revived for daily use barely more than a century ago (a project linked to Eliezer Ben-Yehuda), is now the living tongue of the country. Modern Israel is intensely urban, café- and beach-loving around Tel Aviv, spiritually charged in Jerusalem, and globally famous as a high-tech "start-up nation."

Music, literature, and the arts

Israeli culture fuses traditions from the many places Jews came from. Early Hebrew folk songs (Shirei Eretz Yisrael) built a national repertoire; Mizrahi music, with Middle Eastern scales and instruments brought by Jews from Arab and Muslim lands, is now the country's most popular sound, with stars like Zohar Argov and Sarit Hadad. The singer Ofra Haza, of Yemeni-Jewish background, won international fame. Israel has won the Eurovision Song Contest several times. In literature, S. Y. Agnon won the Nobel Prize in 1966, and writers like Amos Oz and David Grossman are read worldwide. The Israel Philharmonic is a celebrated classical institution.

Notable people

• Theodor Herzl, the founding visionary of political Zionism.
• David Ben-Gurion, Israel's first prime minister and founding leader.
• Golda Meir, prime minister during the 1973 war, one of the era's few women heads of government.
• Yitzhak Rabin, soldier-turned-peacemaker, assassinated in 1995.
• A long roster of scientists and Nobel laureates relative to the country's small size.

Religion, coexistence, and minorities

Israel is a parliamentary democracy and the only country in this book with a Jewish majority, ranging from secular to ultra-Orthodox. About a fifth of citizens are Arabs, mostly Muslim, with Christian and Druze communities; they hold citizenship and vote, sit in parliament, and serve as doctors, judges, and academics, but report real inequalities in funding, land, and opportunity, and live with a divided identity across the conflict.

• The Druze of Israel hold a distinct status: many serve in the military and are generally well integrated, a contrast with their kin across the borders.
• The Bedouin of the Negev desert are among the poorest citizens, with long disputes over land and unrecognised villages.
• Israel also hosts the world center of the Baha'i faith, in Haifa, and small ancient Christian and other communities.

Holding two facts together is essential and uncomfortable: Israel is genuinely democratic and argumentative for its citizens (in 2023, huge protests erupted over a government plan to weaken the judiciary), while it also controls the lives of millions of non-citizen Palestinians, a situation critics, including some Israelis and major rights groups, describe in severe terms, and the government rejects.

Food: Israel's own table

Israeli cuisine is its own distinct fusion, built from the foodways Jews carried home from a hundred countries, blended with Mediterranean ingredients. Its character is exactly this mixing of Jewish diasporas:

• Ashkenazi (European Jewish) dishes: challah (braided Sabbath bread), matzo ball soup, gefilte fish, and schnitzel, which became a national favourite.
• Mizrahi and Sephardi (Middle Eastern and North African Jewish) dishes, now central to the table: shakshuka (eggs poached in spiced tomato, of North African Jewish origin), sabich (a pita of fried eggplant and egg brought by Iraqi Jews), and jachnun and malawach (rolled and fried doughs brought by Yemeni Jews).
• Couscous from North African Jewish communities, often served on Friday nights.
• Local street foods like falafel in pita were widely adopted, and the Israeli breakfast (a spread of eggs, salads, cheeses, and bread, a kibbutz-era tradition) is a signature in its own right.

Everyday life: relationships, family, and home

How people meet and form families varies widely across Israeli society. Among secular and many modern-religious Jews, dating looks much like in other Western countries, with apps, nights out, and university or army friendships leading to relationships. In more traditional religious and ultra-Orthodox (Haredi) communities, matchmaking (with a matchmaker, or shadchan) and family introductions are common, and dating is focused on marriage. One legal fact shapes everyone: civil marriage is not performed inside Israel, so marriage runs through recognized religious authorities (Jewish, Muslim, Christian, Druze). Couples who cannot or prefer not to marry that way, including interfaith couples and same-sex couples, often marry abroad (Cyprus is a frequent choice) and have that marriage registered at home.

Family is central, and Israel has high birth rates by developed-country standards, highest in Haredi and some Arab communities but notably high among secular Jews too. Children are generally raised in a warm, indulgent, sociable style, and extended family gatherings are important. A near-universal shared experience for most Jewish citizens (and Druze) is military service after high school, which strongly shapes friendships, networks, and adult life. The weekly rhythm centers on Shabbat, from Friday evening to Saturday night: many shops, buses, and offices close, families share a Friday night meal, and the observant rest and attend synagogue, while secular Israelis may simply use it as a beach, hiking, or family day.

Israel, especially Tel Aviv, is famously pet-friendly, with a strong dog culture: dog parks, dog-friendly cafes, and high rates of dog ownership. Homes and customs differ across groups: a secular Tel Aviv apartment, a settler family home, a Haredi household in Bnei Brak, and an Arab town in the Galilee can feel like different worlds in dress, language, food, and the place of religion in daily life.

School, work, and the economy

Schooling is generally free and compulsory, and the system is split into separate streams: state (secular), state-religious, ultra-Orthodox, and Arab schools (taught largely in Arabic). The working and school week runs roughly Sunday to Thursday or Friday, with Shabbat off, so Sunday is a normal workday. After school, most Jewish (and Druze) young people enter military conscription, which delays university and is itself a major life stage.

Work culture, especially in the high-tech sector, is fast, informal, and high-pressure, part of Israel's image as a "start-up nation." First names and blunt feedback are normal, hierarchy is downplayed, and quick improvisation is prized. The economy is advanced and high-income, strong in high-tech and software, defense and cybersecurity, medical and agricultural innovation, and water technology (drip irrigation and desalination are Israeli specialties). Alongside this wealth sit real problems: high cost of living (especially housing), and inequality, with lower average incomes among Haredi and Arab citizens.

Language, idioms, and words to know

The main language is Hebrew, an ancient language revived for everyday modern use just over a century ago, an unusual success story among languages. Arabic has a special recognized status and is the first language of Arab citizens; English is widely understood. A few useful words:

• Shalom: hello, goodbye, and peace, all in one word.
• Toda (and toda raba, thank you very much): thank you.
• Yalla: let's go, come on (borrowed from Arabic, used constantly).
• Beseder: okay, fine.

Israelis are known for informal directness, sometimes summed up by the word chutzpah, which means bold nerve or audacity (it can be admiring or critical depending on context). Conversations can sound blunt to outsiders but are usually meant warmly. Rather than invent sayings, it is safe to note that Hebrew daily speech is rich with phrases from the Hebrew Bible and from Jewish tradition, which many Israelis quote in ordinary conversation.

Famous places to know

• Jerusalem: the contested holy city, whose walled Old City holds sites sacred to Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, including the Western Wall, the holiest place where Jews can pray.
• Tel Aviv: the modern, secular, coastal hub, known for beaches, nightlife, and the Bauhaus "White City," a UNESCO-listed collection of 1930s modernist architecture.
• The Dead Sea: the lowest place on Earth's land surface, so salty that swimmers float; visitors coat themselves in its mineral mud.
• Masada: a dramatic desert fortress on a clifftop, site of an ancient last stand against Rome and a powerful national symbol.
• The Sea of Galilee (Lake Kinneret): a freshwater lake in the north, important in Jewish and Christian history and a key water source.
• Haifa: a mixed Jewish-Arab port city on Mount Carmel, famous for the terraced Baha'i Gardens around the faith's golden-domed shrine.

Fitting in: visiting, impressing people, and being a good citizen

Israeli etiquette is informal and direct: people skip small talk, speak frankly, and will happily debate, which is friendly rather than rude. Hospitality is warm, and being offered food and drink is common. Respect the huge variety of religious observance: keep Shabbat in mind (some places close, and in religious neighborhoods driving or phone use on Shabbat is unwelcome), and dress modestly at holy sites (covered shoulders and knees, and head coverings where asked, such as at the Western Wall). Security awareness is part of daily life, with bag checks at malls and stations that are routine, not alarming.

To make a good impression, learn a few Hebrew (and Arabic) words, ask questions, accept hospitality, and engage honestly while staying sensitive about the conflict. Tourism is well developed, with good infrastructure, but the regional conflict affects safety and access, sometimes sharply and at short notice. Always check official sources for current entry rules, visas, and travel advisories before a trip. This is general information, not legal advice.

Suggested reading, news, and links

Books

• Fiction and essays by Amos Oz, one of Israel's best-known writers, including his memoir A Tale of Love and Darkness.
• Novels by David Grossman and A. B. Yehoshua, widely translated.
• For history, the works of Anita Shapira, a respected historian of Zionism and modern Israel. For a fuller picture, read Israeli and Palestinian historians together.

News

• International: the BBC and Reuters for broad coverage.
• Israeli outlets, which differ in perspective: Haaretz (left-leaning, liberal), The Times of Israel (centrist, English-language), and The Jerusalem Post (centre-right). Reading more than one gives a fuller view.

Links

• BBC country profile (search "BBC Israel country profile").
• Britannica entry on Israel for a reference overview.

Today, and how to talk about it

Israel in the mid-2020s is a prosperous, militarily powerful, internally divided democracy, shaped by the trauma of October 2023, the ensuing war, and the unresolved conflict with the Palestinians.

If you talk with Israelis: for many, safety and survival are not theoretical, given family histories of the Holocaust and of wars, and the events of October 2023. Acknowledging that fear, while not erasing the Palestinian reality from the previous chapter, is the respectful stance. The single most useful habit in any conversation about this conflict is to resist the urge to pick a team, and to recognise that two peoples have real and painful attachments to the same land.

From the most contested land we move north to the most intricately balanced country in the region: Lebanon. 👉

Lebanon

TL;DR. Lebanon is small, beautiful, and built on a delicate power-sharing system among many religious communities. Its mountains long sheltered minorities, above all Maronite Christians and Druze. Modern Lebanon shares power by sect: a Christian president, a Sunni prime minister, a Shia speaker of parliament. That system has produced both remarkable coexistence and a devastating civil war (1975 to 1990) whose alliances constantly crossed religious lines. Today Lebanon is in deep economic crisis, with the Iran-backed Shia movement Hezbollah as its most powerful force.

Key takeaways

• Lebanon's defining feature is confessionalism: political power split among religious sects by formula.
• Christians and Muslims mostly live together closely in daily life, inside a rigid system designed so no group dominates.
• The civil war (1975 to 1990) was not a clean "Christians vs Muslims" war; alliances shifted constantly and crossed sectarian lines.
• Syria dominated Lebanon for nearly 30 years; Israel invaded several times; Hezbollah became a state within the state.
• Lebanon has produced an outsized culture (Fairuz, Gibran) and the region's most famous cuisine, and hosts huge refugee populations.

Main events at a glance

The land and the deep past

The coastal strip was home to the Phoenicians, the seafaring traders of antiquity (Tyre, Sidon, Byblos) who spread the alphabet. Inland rises Mount Lebanon, a rugged range whose valleys have for centuries sheltered religious minorities able to defend themselves there, above all the Maronite Christians and the Druze. That geography, a mountain full of minorities, is the seed of everything that follows.

A mountain of communities, and the modern state

For centuries Mount Lebanon was a semi-autonomous area where Maronites and Druze lived in a delicate, often tense balance under local lords and loose Ottoman oversight. In 1860 that balance broke: Druze-Maronite fighting became a massacre of Christians, with related killings in Damascus (see the Levant chapter). European powers intervened (France positioning itself as protector of the Maronites), and the Ottomans granted Mount Lebanon a special autonomous status with a power-sharing council. The principle that Lebanon's communities must share power by formula was born then.

After World War I, France held the mandate and in 1920 created Greater Lebanon, enlarging the Christian-majority mountain with surrounding coastal cities and the Bekaa valley, which added large Muslim populations. This produced a country with no single majority. At independence in 1943, leaders struck the unwritten National Pact, still recognisable today:

• The President is always a Maronite Christian.
• The Prime Minister is always a Sunni Muslim.
• The Speaker of Parliament is always a Shia Muslim.
• Posts are divided among the recognised sects by quota.

This system is confessionalism: power distributed by religious community. Lebanon officially recognises 18 sects.

Don't be confused: confessionalism is both the glue and the crack. Sharing power by sect lets many communities coexist in one state, and it also freezes sectarian identity into politics, rewards sectarian leaders, and makes reform almost impossible. Many Lebanese both rely on the system and resent it.

How Christians and Muslims actually live together

In everyday life, coexistence in Lebanon is real and old. Christians and Muslims share cities, schools, businesses, food, music, dialect, and friendships; intermarriage exists though it remains sensitive. Beirut has long been one of the Arab world's most cosmopolitan cities, with churches and mosques close together and a famously open social and cultural life.

But coexistence is structured. Personal status law (marriage, divorce, inheritance) is handled by each sect's own religious courts, not a common civil code, so your community still shapes your legal life. Many neighbourhoods and villages lean toward one community. And the balance is demographically fraught: no census has been held since 1932, because counting people would upset the power-sharing quotas. The Christian share has fallen over the decades through lower birth rates and heavy emigration, while the Shia community in particular has grown, but the political formula has only partly adjusted, a constant source of tension.

So the honest answer to "how do Christians live with Muslims in Lebanon?" is: mostly peacefully and intimately in daily life, within a rigid political system designed to prevent any group from dominating, a system that has sometimes kept the peace and sometimes collapsed into war.

The civil war (1975 to 1990) and who allied with whom

This is the clearest case in the whole book of alliances that cross religious lines. The Lebanese Civil War was not a simple Christians-versus-Muslims war. Sides shifted repeatedly, and former enemies became allies and back again. Here is the tangle, made as clear as possible:

• The opening (1975). Broadly, a mainly Christian (Maronite) camp, led by the Phalange (Kataeb) and the Gemayel family, faced the Lebanese National Movement, a coalition of leftist, pan-Arab, Sunni, and Druze factions led by the Druze leader Kamal Jumblatt, allied with the armed Palestinian factions (the PLO). So at the start it looked roughly like Christians on one side and a Muslim-leftist-Palestinian bloc on the other.
• The first twist (1976): Syria backs the Christians. Syria sent its army in, and, surprisingly, intervened on the side of the Christians to stop the Palestinian-leftist bloc from winning, because Damascus did not want a radical, PLO-dominated Lebanon on its border. A secular Muslim-led Arab state thus propped up the Maronite militias. Syria later switched sides more than once.
• The second twist (1982): Christians ally with Israel. When Israel invaded in 1982 to expel the PLO, it allied with the Christian (Maronite) militias and helped install a Christian president. So a Jewish state and Christian Lebanese militias were partners against Palestinian and Syrian forces. It was during this period that the Christian Phalange carried out the Sabra and Shatila massacre of Palestinian civilians, while Israeli forces controlled the area.
• Shia movements rise. The Shia community, long marginalised, organised: the Amal movement, and from 1982 Hezbollah, founded with Iranian help to resist the Israeli occupation. Amal even fought the Palestinians in the "War of the Camps," another Muslim-versus-Palestinian episode.
• Wars within each community. The Druze (Jumblatt's followers) fought the Christians in the 1983 "War of the Mountain." Late in the war, Christians fought other Christians (General Aoun against the Lebanese Forces), and Shia fought Shia (Amal against Hezbollah). Almost everyone fought almost everyone at some point.

Around 150,000 people died and Beirut was wrecked. The war formally ended with the Taif Agreement (1989), which kept confessionalism but rebalanced power between Christians and Muslims and disarmed most militias.

The lesson: in Lebanon, religion did not reliably predict who fought whom. Alliances followed power and outside patrons (Syria, Israel, Iran, the PLO) as much as faith. This is the single best example of why "Sunni vs Shia" or "Christian vs Muslim" labels can mislead.

After the war: Hezbollah, Syria, and collapse

One militia was not disarmed: Hezbollah, the Shia movement backed by Iran and allied with Syria, which kept its weapons by casting itself as a "resistance" force against Israel's occupation of the south (Israel withdrew in 2000). It became the most powerful armed and political force in Lebanon, a "state within a state," fighting a major war with Israel in 2006 and again in 2024 as the Gaza war spread, suffering heavy losses.

Other landmarks:

• 2005: the assassination of former prime minister Rafik Hariri, widely blamed on Syria and its allies, triggered the Cedar Revolution, mass protests that forced Syrian troops to withdraw after 29 years.
• 2019 onward: one of the worst economic collapses in modern history; the currency lost most of its value and savings were wiped out, sparking protests against a political class seen as corrupt.
• 2020: a catastrophic explosion at the port of Beirut killed over 200 people and devastated the capital, a symbol of state failure.

How people lived: daily life and lifestyle

Lebanon is famous for a lifestyle that mixes Mediterranean ease with cosmopolitan flair. Many Lebanese move easily among Arabic, French, and English, a legacy of the French era and of a worldwide diaspora (there are far more people of Lebanese descent abroad than in Lebanon, with huge communities in Brazil, West Africa, and beyond). Life splits between the buzzing coast, with Beirut's legendary cafés, restaurants, and nightlife, and the cooler mountain villages where families keep ancestral homes and return in summer. Lebanese are known for resilience and style, for rebuilding and partying through crisis after crisis, and for treating food and hospitality as central to social life.

Music, literature, and the arts

Lebanon's cultural output is enormous for its size. Fairuz, the most beloved singer in the Arab world, is a near-sacred national icon; her songs, many written by the Rahbani Brothers, are part of daily life across the region. Other greats include Wadih El Safi, Sabah, and Majida El Roumi, and modern bands like Mashrou' Leila. In literature, Khalil Gibran, author of The Prophet, is one of the best-selling poets of all time, and the novelist Amin Maalouf writes acclaimed historical fiction. Beirut has long been a publishing and arts hub for the whole Arab world.

Notable people

• Fairuz, the iconic singer.
• Khalil Gibran, poet and author of The Prophet.
• Rafik Hariri, the businessman and prime minister whose assassination reshaped Lebanese politics.
• Amin Maalouf, the internationally acclaimed novelist.

Religion, coexistence, and minorities

Lebanon's people are split among Christians (Maronite, Greek Orthodox, Greek Catholic, Armenian, and others), Sunni and Shia Muslims, and Druze, with no group a majority. Beyond the main sects, Lebanon's treatment of minorities is a mixed record:

• Armenians, who arrived as refugees from the 1915 genocide, were welcomed, became citizens, and hold reserved seats in parliament, a relative success story of integration.
• Palestinian refugees, present since 1948 and numbering in the hundreds of thousands, have been treated far worse: long barred from many professions, from owning property, and from full civil rights, and largely confined to crowded camps, a long-standing grievance and a stain on Lebanon's record.
• Syrian refugees, well over a million since 2011, strain a tiny, bankrupt country and face rising hostility.
• Migrant domestic workers, mainly women from Africa and Asia, have suffered under the kafala sponsorship system, with documented abuses.

Food: Lebanon's own table

Lebanese cuisine is the country's pride and its most famous export, a distinct tradition known worldwide. Its signature is the mezze, a long parade of small plates meant to be lingered over:

• Tabbouleh, the Lebanese herb salad: mostly finely chopped parsley and mint with a little bulgur, tomato, lemon, and olive oil (the herbs, not the grain, are the star).
• Kibbeh, the national dish in many forms: spiced minced meat and bulgur, served raw (kibbeh nayyeh), fried in torpedo-shaped shells, or baked in trays.
• Hummus and moutabbal/baba ghanoush, the classic chickpea and smoky eggplant dips, alongside fattoush (a salad with crisped bread and sumac).
• Manakish, the breakfast flatbread topped with za'atar and olive oil, sold from every corner bakery.
• Grilled meats (shish taouk, kafta) and, for dessert, baklava and maamoul, with strong Lebanese coffee or fresh juices.

Education and the IQ question

Lebanon has historically had some of the Arab world's best universities and highest education levels, though the economic collapse has battered the system and driven talent abroad. On "national IQ," commonly cited datasets put Lebanon in roughly the low-to-mid 80s, but these figures rest on weak data and are dismissed by mainstream science (see the education and IQ chapter); they track disruption and poverty, not ability.

Everyday life: relationships, family, and home

How people meet and pair off varies widely. In cosmopolitan Beirut and among much of the diaspora, dating is relatively open and liberal, with couples meeting through university, work, friends, cafes, and apps, and choosing partners freely. In more rural areas and in more religiously observant families across the sects, courtship tends to be more guarded and family-aware. Across the board, family approval carries weight, and many couples balance personal choice against parents' expectations.

Marriage has an unusual legal twist. There is no civil marriage performed inside Lebanon: each of the 18 recognised sects runs its own religious court for marriage, divorce, and inheritance. This makes interfaith marriage hard to register at home, so many couples (interfaith couples especially, and others who prefer a secular ceremony) travel abroad to marry, with Cyprus a common and convenient choice, and Lebanon then recognises the foreign marriage. Reform campaigns for an optional civil marriage law recur but have not passed.

Family is the strong centre of Lebanese life, and that centre stretches far beyond the border. There are widely thought to be more people of Lebanese descent abroad than inside the country, with large communities in Brazil, West Africa, the Gulf, Europe, North America, and Australia. Diaspora relatives often stay closely involved, visiting in summer, sending money home, and shaping family decisions. Children are usually doted on and education is taken seriously. Respect for elders is expected, and grandparents are frequently part of daily life. Many households keep pets, with dogs and cats common, though attitudes range from affection to wariness depending on family and upbringing. Homes are typically kept neat and guests are received with pride, and it is common to remove shoes or follow the host's lead indoors. Through war, displacement, and economic collapse, a famous Lebanese resilience and love of social life endure: people still gather, host, and celebrate even in hard times.

School, work, and the economy

Schooling generally begins with kindergarten and runs through primary and secondary grades, with national exams toward the end of secondary school. A large share of pupils attend private and religious schools (run by Christian and Muslim institutions alike) alongside public schools, and education is often multilingual: Arabic plus French or English, with many schools teaching science and maths in a European language. As a result many Lebanese grow up comfortably trilingual. Lebanon has historically had one of the region's most educated populations and respected universities, although the post-2019 crisis has strained schools, pushed costs onto families, and driven many teachers and graduates to emigrate.

Working hours commonly run through the daytime, often with longer hours in private business and services, and a weekend that may fall on Saturday and Sunday or vary by employer. The economy leans heavily on services: banking and finance (historically a regional hub), trade, tourism, real estate, and a famously entrepreneurial private sector.

The honest picture since 2019 is severe. Lebanon suffered one of the worst financial collapses in modern history: the currency lost most of its value, banks froze and effectively wiped out or trapped many people's savings, and poverty rose sharply. The once-prized banking sector lost its credibility, public services degraded, and the state struggled to provide reliable electricity. Tourism and the spending of the vast diaspora, along with remittances sent home to families, became vital lifelines keeping the economy and many households afloat.

Language, idioms, and words to know

The everyday language is Arabic, specifically the Lebanese variety of the Levantine dialect, which differs from formal Modern Standard Arabic used in writing and news. Alongside it, French and English are widespread, and one of the most distinctive features of Lebanese speech is code-switching: people may blend all three in a single sentence (the playful greeting "Hi, kifak, ca va?" mixing English, Arabic, and French is often cited as a self-aware example).

A few useful words and phrases:

• marhaba: hello (reply often "marhabteen").
• shukran: thank you; many also say the French merci.
• habibi (to a man) or habibti (to a woman): "my dear," used warmly among friends and family.
• yalla: "come on" or "let's go."
• sahtein: roughly "to your health," said around food, like "enjoy your meal."

Levantine Arabic is rich in proverbs. Two well-known examples: "al-tikrar bi-allem al-humar," literally "repetition teaches even a donkey," meaning practice makes anyone learn; and "al-qird bi-ayn immo ghazal," "a monkey is a gazelle in his mother's eyes," meaning a parent sees only beauty in their own child. The Lebanese-American writer Khalil Gibran, author of The Prophet, is widely quoted; rather than risk a misquotation, it is safe to say his book is full of short reflections on love, work, children, and joy and sorrow that many readers know by heart.

Famous places to know

• Beirut: the capital, a Mediterranean port city long known for its mix of churches and mosques, cafes, universities, and nightlife, and for repeatedly rebuilding itself.
• Byblos (Jbeil): one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world, with layers of ruins, an old harbour, and a Crusader castle.
• Baalbek: home to some of the largest and best-preserved Roman temples anywhere, including the colossal Temple of Jupiter and the Temple of Bacchus.
• Jeita Grotto: a spectacular two-level system of limestone caves with underground rivers and dramatic rock formations.
• The Cedars of God: an ancient grove of Lebanon cedars, the tree on the national flag, in the northern mountains.
• Tyre and Sidon: ancient Phoenician coastal cities in the south, with Roman remains, old souks, and sea castles.

Fitting in: visiting, impressing people, and being a good citizen

Hospitality is central, and visitors quickly notice it. Hosts tend to offer food, coffee, and drinks generously, and politely accepting at least a little is appreciated; expect to be urged to take more. Lebanese in cities often dress with care, and looking neat and put-together is a way to show respect. Bringing a small gift such as sweets when invited to a home is a kind gesture.

The most important social tip is restraint about sect and politics. Because identity and power are organised by religious community, asking someone directly which sect they belong to, or pressing them on partisan politics, can feel intrusive or loaded; it is better to let people share such things on their own terms. Warmth, curiosity about food and family, and genuine appreciation of Lebanese culture go a long way.

Be aware that Lebanon has faced ongoing economic crisis and periodic instability, including the 2024 conflict in the south. Conditions, safety, and entry or visa rules can change, so check official and current government travel and entry guidance before relying on anything here. This is general cultural information, not legal advice.

Suggested reading, news, and links

Books

• Kamal Salibi, A House of Many Mansions: a classic study of how the Lebanese imagine their own history and identity.
• Robert Fisk, Pity the Nation: a long, vivid journalist's account of the civil war and its aftermath.
• Works by Amin Maalouf, the acclaimed Lebanese-French novelist and essayist, for fiction and reflections on identity in the region.

News

• International outlets such as the BBC and Reuters for broad coverage.
• Lebanese outlets including L'Orient-Le Jour (in French, with an English edition, L'Orient Today). The long-running English-language Daily Star ceased regular publication, and its role has been partly taken up by other local English outlets. Note that Lebanon's media landscape is politicised, with many outlets tied to political or sectarian backers, so it helps to read more than one source.

Links

• A BBC country profile for Lebanon (search "BBC Lebanon country profile").
• The Britannica entry on Lebanon for an encyclopedic overview.

Today, and how to talk about it

Lebanon in the mid-2020s is in deep crisis: economically broken, politically paralysed, scarred by the 2024 conflict, yet held together by a resilient, creative society and the world's strongest case study in religious coexistence.

If you talk with Lebanese people: many are warm, funny, worldly, and exhausted by their leaders. Sect is sensitive, do not assume someone's politics from their religion, and remember that countless Lebanese long for a non-sectarian future. Pride in Lebanese food, in Fairuz, and in Lebanese hospitality is close to universal and a great place to start.

Next, the country at the heart of Greater Syria, and of the region's deadliest recent war: Syria. 👉

Syria

TL;DR. Syria sits at the heart of historic Greater Syria, and Damascus is one of the oldest cities on earth. It was the seat of the Umayyad caliphate's golden age. Modern Syria, independent in 1946, fell under the Baath Party and then the Assad family, members of the Alawite minority, who ruled with an iron hand from 1970. A 2011 uprising became a catastrophic civil war that killed around half a million people, displaced half the population, drew in Russia, Iran, Turkey, the US, and ISIS, and only ended in late 2024 when Assad's government suddenly collapsed and he fled to Russia.

Key takeaways

• Damascus and Aleppo are ancient; Syria was the center of the Umayyad caliphate.
• Modern Syria was shaped by Baathism and 54 years of Assad family rule (1970 to 2024).
• A minority community, the Alawites, ruled a Sunni-majority country, a central tension behind the war.
• The civil war (2011 to 2024) was an uprising, a sectarian conflict, a proxy war, and a fight against ISIS all at once.
• Assad's fall in 2024 began an uncertain transition with high stakes for the country's many minorities.

Main events at a glance

The land and the deep past

Syria's soil holds some of civilization's first chapters: ancient cities like Ebla and Mari, the Aramaeans whose language spread across the region, the coastal Phoenician towns, and the desert caravan city of Palmyra, whose warrior-queen Zenobia briefly defied Rome. Under Rome and then the Christian Byzantines, Syria was a wealthy, cultured province.

Its golden moment came with Islam. The Umayyad caliphate (661 to 750) ruled its vast empire from Damascus, making the city a world capital; the magnificent Umayyad Mosque still stands. When the Abbasids moved the capital to Baghdad, Syria's political star dimmed, but it remained a rich cultural and religious center through the Crusades (rolled back by Saladin), the Mongol invasions, Mamluk rule, and four centuries of Ottoman control.

The modern state and the Assad era

After World War I, France took the mandate over Syria, carving Lebanon out of it and suppressing revolts. Syria became independent in 1946 but was unstable, suffering a series of military coups. A defining ideology emerged: Baathism, an Arab nationalist, secular, socialist movement. Syria briefly merged with Egypt as the United Arab Republic (1958 to 1961). In 1963 the Baath Party seized power, and in 1970 the defence minister Hafez al-Assad took control.

Hafez al-Assad built a tight authoritarian state and ruled for thirty years. He belonged to the Alawite minority (a small offshoot related to Shia Islam, see the faiths chapter), and Alawites came to dominate the security forces in a Sunni-majority country, a fact that would matter enormously later. His rule was marked by fierce repression, most infamously the Hama massacre of 1982, when the army crushed a Muslim Brotherhood uprising, killing many thousands and razing much of the old city. He also lost the Golan Heights to Israel in 1967 (still occupied and later annexed) and dominated Lebanon for decades. His son Bashar al-Assad succeeded him in 2000; early hopes of reform faded into the same pattern.

The civil war (2011 to 2024) and who allied with whom

In 2011, inspired by the Arab Spring, Syrians launched mostly peaceful protests demanding reform. The government answered with lethal force, and the uprising spiralled into a civil war of extreme complexity. The alliances are essential to understanding it:

• The Assad government was kept alive by a powerful outside coalition: Russia (decisive air power from 2015), Iran, and Iran's ally Hezbollah from Lebanon, plus Iraqi Shia militias. Without them Assad would likely have fallen years earlier.
• The opposition was fragmented and backed by rival outside powers: the early Free Syrian Army and various rebel groups received support at different times from Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the United States, and Jordan, who often disagreed with each other.
• Jihadist groups grew within the chaos. Al-Qaeda's branch evolved into Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), and, most dramatically, ISIS seized a third of Syria and Iraq in 2014 and fought essentially everyone.
• The Kurds of the northeast formed their own forces (the SDF), which became the main US ally on the ground against ISIS, while being opposed by Turkey, which views them as linked to its own Kurdish insurgency. Turkey launched several incursions into northern Syria.
• Israel repeatedly struck Iranian and Hezbollah targets inside Syria, a separate layer of the conflict.

The toll was catastrophic: roughly half a million killed and more than half the population displaced, including over six million refugees abroad, straining Lebanon, Jordan, Turkey, and Europe. Cities like Aleppo were reduced to rubble. Chemical weapons were used, most notoriously in 2013.

Don't be confused: the Syrian war was never just one fight. It was at once an uprising against a dictatorship, a sectarian conflict, a proxy war between outside powers, and a battle against ISIS, all at the same time. Any single-cause explanation is wrong.

The fall of Assad (2024)

After years of frozen stalemate, the war ended suddenly. In late 2024, a swift offensive led by HTS and allied factions swept across the country. The exhausted government collapsed and Bashar al-Assad fled to Russia, ending more than five decades of Assad family rule. Crucially, his foreign backers did not save him this time: Russia was distracted by its war in Ukraine and Iran and Hezbollah were weakened by their own confrontations with Israel. Syria entered an uncertain transition under the former rebels, with enormous questions about whether the new authorities would govern inclusively and protect minorities. As of early 2026 that transition is still unfolding; check current reporting for the latest.

How people lived: daily life and lifestyle

Before the war, Syrian daily life centered on some of the world's most atmospheric old cities. In Damascus and Aleppo, life revolved around the covered souks (markets), grand mosques and churches, courtyard houses built around fountains and citrus trees, and the hammam (bathhouse). Family ties are strong, hospitality is a point of honour, and food and conversation fill social life. Syria was long known as a relatively cosmopolitan, religiously mixed society where neighbours of different faiths shared streets and festivals. The war scattered this world: millions live in exile or as the displaced, and rebuilding the social fabric is as daunting as rebuilding the cities.

Music, poetry, and the arts

Syria has a deep classical Arab musical tradition. Aleppo is especially revered as a city of music, home to the qudud Halabiya (devotional and love songs) and the great singer Sabah Fakhri, a master of the muwashahat classical form. Damascus produced the poet Nizar Qabbani, one of the most popular Arab poets of the 20th century, known for love poetry and political verse, and Adunis (Ali Ahmad Said), a towering modernist poet. Syrian craftsmanship, in textiles (damask cloth is named for Damascus), inlaid wood, glass, and the famous Aleppo soap, is centuries old.

Notable people

• Saladin, the medieval Muslim leader who retook Jerusalem, long associated with Damascus.
• Hafez al-Assad and Bashar al-Assad, the father-and-son rulers (1970 to 2024).
• Nizar Qabbani, the beloved poet of Damascus.
• Sabah Fakhri, the legendary classical singer of Aleppo.

Religion, coexistence, and minorities

Syria is mostly Sunni Muslim, with significant minorities: Alawites (the former ruling community, on the coast), Christians of several ancient churches (the village of Maaloula still speaks a form of Aramaic), Druze (around Suwayda), Ismailis, and, as an ethnic group, the Kurds. For generations these communities lived intermixed, especially in the cities, with a tradition of practical coexistence.

The minority story is double-edged:

• Under the Assads, the Alawite minority held disproportionate power in the army and security services, breeding resentment among the Sunni majority, one root of the war. Now, after Assad's fall, Alawites fear retribution.
• The Kurds were long mistreated: after a 1962 census many were stripped of citizenship and left stateless, and the state pursued "Arabization" policies and suppressed the Kurdish language.
• Christians, who once made up a larger share of the population, have emigrated heavily during the war and watch the transition anxiously.
• The protection of all these minorities is the central worry of the post-Assad era.

Food: Syria's own table

Syrian cuisine, and Aleppo's in particular, is regarded as one of the great cuisines of the Arab world, known for depth of spice and the use of sour and sweet together. It is its own tradition, with Aleppo especially proud of its specialities:

• Kibbeh in dozens of forms (Aleppo alone is said to have many varieties), spiced meat and bulgur baked, fried, or simmered in sauces.
• Muhammara, a rich dip of roasted red peppers, walnuts, and pomegranate molasses, an Aleppine signature.
• Cherry kebab (kebab karaz), meatballs in a tart-sweet sour-cherry sauce, a famous Aleppo dish, and the use of Aleppo pepper (a fruity, mild chili) throughout.
• Fatteh (layers of bread, chickpeas, and yoghurt) and yabraq (stuffed vine leaves).
• Damascus is renowned for sweets, including stretchy booza (Arabic ice cream pounded with mastic) and fine baklava.

Education and the IQ question

Before the war Syria had near-universal primary schooling and a solid university system; the conflict shattered it, leaving a generation with disrupted education. On "national IQ," commonly cited datasets list Syria in roughly the low 80s, but these numbers rest on weak data and are rejected by mainstream science (see the education and IQ chapter); after such a war they would reflect collapse and trauma, not the ability of a people.

Everyday life: relationships, family, and home

Traditionally, people met within wide circles of family, neighbours, school, and work, and marriage was treated as a joining of two families as much as two people. Families had a strong role: a man's relatives would often approach the woman's family, an engagement period followed, and a mahr (a marriage gift or dower from the groom, agreed in the marriage contract) was customary. These customs vary a great deal across communities, between city and countryside, and among more and less religious families, and they have shifted under the pressures of war and exile.

The extended family has long been the centre of life, with relatives, neighbours, and the local quarter forming a daily support network. Children are cherished, raised with the help of grandparents, aunts, and uncles, and taught respect for elders, whose opinions carry weight. Several generations often shared one home or lived close by. The classic old-city home was the courtyard house (a bayt arabi), built inward around a fountain and citrus or jasmine, cool and private, and a stage for the famous Syrian hospitality: guests are pressed to eat and drink, and turning down coffee can seem unfriendly. Cleanliness and tidy homes are valued, and the public bathhouse (the hammam) was for centuries a place to wash, relax, and socialize. Attitudes to pets vary: cats are common and well liked around homes and streets, while dogs are more often kept for guarding or herding than as house pets, though this differs from family to family.

The civil war, mass displacement, and a huge refugee diaspora have fractured all of this. Families have been split across countries, courtyard neighbourhoods emptied or destroyed, and many people now build family life far from home or amid ruins.

School, work, and the economy

Before the war Syria had reached near-universal primary schooling, with free public education, a state university system, and high literacy among the young. School ran from the early primary years through preparatory and secondary stages, and the conflict shattered much of it: schools were destroyed or repurposed, millions of children lost years of learning, and many studied in tents, in exile, or not at all. Rebuilding education for this generation is one of the country's hardest tasks.

Working life traditionally ran from morning with a long midday break in the heat, and Friday is the main day of rest. The old souk and trade culture, the covered markets of Damascus and Aleppo where merchants, craftsmen, and bargaining filled the lanes, shaped a strong tradition of small business and skilled handwork.

The economy, honestly told, has three chapters. Before the war Syria was a middle-income country resting on agriculture (wheat, cotton, olives, fruit), modest oil in the east, textiles and other industry, and tourism to its great historic sites. The war then brought devastation: collapsed output, ruined cities and infrastructure, a broken currency, lost oil fields, and heavy international sanctions on the former government. The result was widespread poverty and dependence on aid. The country now faces an enormous reconstruction challenge, rebuilding homes, power, water, schools, and an economy, amid deep uncertainty about funding and the political transition.

Language, idioms, and words to know

The language is Arabic, in the Syrian form of the wider Levantine dialect spoken across Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, and Palestine. This everyday speech is often admired for its warmth and softness, while formal writing and news use Modern Standard Arabic. Remarkably, in the village of Maaloula and a couple of nearby villages, a form of Aramaic, a language of the ancient Near East, still survives in daily use.

A few useful phrases:

• marhaba means "hello".
• shukran means "thank you".
• tfaddal (to a man) or tfaddali (to a woman) is a warm, all-purpose word meaning roughly "please, go ahead", used to welcome someone in, offer a seat, or invite a guest to help themselves.

Levantine speech is rich in proverbs. A few well-known ones:

• "The one who has no elders should buy some" expresses the value of the wisdom and protection that older relatives provide.
• "An onion offered with love is worth a sheep" means a small gift given with affection is worth more than a large one given grudgingly.

Damascus produced Nizar Qabbani, one of the most popular Arab poets of the 20th century, celebrated for his love poetry and his political verse; rather than quote a specific line here, it is fair to say his work made tender, plain-spoken language about love widely beloved across the Arab world.

Famous places to know

• Damascus is one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities on earth; its walled old city holds the magnificent Umayyad Mosque and a labyrinthine covered souk.
• Aleppo, an ancient trading metropolis, is crowned by its great citadel and was famous for its vast covered souk, much of which was badly damaged in the war.
• Palmyra, the desert caravan city of Queen Zenobia, left stunning Roman-era ruins; several were deliberately destroyed by ISIS.
• Krak des Chevaliers is one of the best-preserved Crusader castles in the world, a vast stone fortress in the western hills.
• Hama is known for its giant wooden waterwheels (the norias) that have turned on the Orontes river for centuries.

Visitors should know that war damaged or destroyed parts of several of these sites, including Aleppo's souk and citadel area and the ruins of Palmyra.

Fitting in: visiting, impressing people, and being a good citizen

Syrian hospitality is legendary, and the surest way to make a good impression is to accept it graciously: take the coffee, tea, or food you are offered, and expect to be urged to have more. Dressing modestly, especially at religious sites and away from big cities, is respectful, and at mosques and churches you follow the local customs (covering the head, removing shoes where asked). Eating with the right hand is the polite norm. Warmth, patience, and genuine interest in people's families and in Syria's deep history, food, and music go a long way.

Be sensitive: nearly everyone has been touched by the war, and people hold a wide range of views about the old government, the new authorities, and the outside powers. Listen more than you opine, and let people raise politics if they wish to. Syria is emerging from war with serious issues of safety, access, unexploded ordnance, checkpoints, and an unsettled transition, and conditions can change quickly. Any plans to travel or questions about entry rules should be checked through official sources such as your own government's travel advice and recognized humanitarian agencies. This is general information, not legal advice.

Suggested reading, news, and links

Books

• Patrick Seale, Asad of Syria: The Struggle for the Middle East, a well-known study of Hafez al-Assad and his era.
• For the uprising and civil war, look for recent, reputable accounts and reporting from established journalists and historians; because the field is fast-moving, choose well-reviewed titles from trusted publishers rather than relying on any single book.

News

• International outlets with long Syria coverage include the BBC, Reuters, and Al Jazeera. Note that independent local media inside Syria was tightly restricted for many years; the situation is changing in the transition, so weigh sources carefully.

Links

• The BBC country profile for Syria.
• Britannica's entry on Syria for history and geography.
• United Nations and humanitarian agency pages (for example the UN refugee agency UNHCR and OCHA) for the latest on the humanitarian crisis and reconstruction.

Today, and how to talk about it

Syria in the mid-2020s is emerging from a devastating war into a fragile, uncertain new order, with millions of refugees weighing whether to return, vast reconstruction needed, and minorities watching anxiously.

If you talk with Syrians: nearly everyone has lost something, a home, a relative, a country they cannot safely return to. People hold a wide range of views on the old government, the rebels, and the outside powers, and many are simply weary of being defined by the war. Curiosity about Syria's extraordinary history, music, and food, and respect for what people have endured, matter more than any political opinion.

Next, the quietest and most stable of the Levantine states, often a refuge for its neighbours' upheavals: Jordan. 👉

Jordan

TL;DR. Jordan is the calm in a stormy neighbourhood: a young, resource-poor monarchy created by Britain after World War I for the Hashemite dynasty, which still rules. It has stayed remarkably stable while war and revolution swept its neighbours, by combining a respected monarchy, a loyal army, careful diplomacy (close to the West, at peace with Israel since 1994), and foreign aid. Its defining social fact is that it has absorbed wave after wave of refugees, Palestinian, Iraqi, and Syrian, so that a large share of Jordanians trace their roots to Palestine.

Key takeaways

• Jordan was, in effect, created around the Hashemite dynasty, which claims descent from the Prophet Muhammad.
• It is unusually stable for the region, through a mix of monarchy, army, diplomacy, and aid.
• It is a nation of refugees: a very large share of citizens are of Palestinian origin, plus Iraqis and Syrians.
• Its alliances flipped from fighting Israel (1948, 1967) to making peace (1994); it once fought the Palestinian PLO (Black September).
• It is a close US ally with limited democracy and real economic strain.

Main events at a glance

The land and the deep past

The land east of the Jordan River is dry but historic. Ancient kingdoms (Edom, Moab, Ammon, whose name survives in the capital Amman) appear in the Bible. Its most spectacular legacy is Petra, the rose-red city carved into cliffs by the Nabataeans, an Arab trading people who grew rich controlling caravan routes around two thousand years ago. Under Rome the region held prosperous cities (the Decapolis, including the superbly preserved Jerash). The early Islamic Umayyads left desert palaces here. Then, like its neighbours, it spent four centuries as an Ottoman backwater, part of Greater Syria.

A country created for a dynasty

Jordan, more than most, was made by the aftermath of World War I. During the war the Hashemites, the family of Sharif Hussein of Mecca, led the Arab Revolt against the Ottomans, allied with Britain (the campaign romanticised in the tale of "Lawrence of Arabia"), expecting a large independent Arab kingdom. They did not get it; the land was divided by Britain and France instead.

As a consolation and a strategic arrangement, Britain carved out the territory east of the Jordan River and in 1921 made Hussein's son Abdullah the ruler of the new Emirate of Transjordan, under British oversight. It became fully independent as the Kingdom of Jordan in 1946. So Jordan is, in a real sense, a state built around the Hashemite dynasty, which still rules.

The kings, the wars, and who allied with whom

Jordan's modern history is largely the story of its monarchs navigating dangers far larger than their small country, and its alliances shifted sharply:

• King Abdullah I annexed the West Bank after the 1948 war, in which Jordan's British-trained Arab Legion was the most effective Arab force against Israel. He was assassinated in Jerusalem in 1951 by a Palestinian gunman.
• King Hussein ruled for an extraordinary 46 years (1953 to 1999), surviving many assassination and coup attempts. In 1967 he joined Egypt and Syria against Israel and lost the West Bank and East Jerusalem, a huge blow.
• Black September (1970). Armed Palestinian factions (the PLO) had built a state-within-a-state in Jordan and challenged the monarchy. In a short, bloody war the Jordanian army crushed and expelled them; Syria briefly sent tanks toward the border to back the PLO before withdrawing. The PLO relocated to Lebanon, with fateful consequences there. This is a clear case of an Arab monarchy fighting the Palestinian national movement.
• 1991 Gulf War. King Hussein declined to join the US-led coalition against Iraq and leaned toward Baghdad, reflecting his people's sympathies, which cost Jordan dearly in aid and Gulf relations.
• 1994. Jordan signed a peace treaty with Israel, the second Arab state to do so after Egypt, completing its shift from combatant to partner.
• King Abdullah II has ruled since 1999, steering through the Iraq wars, the Arab Spring, and the Syrian war, keeping Jordan firmly in the US and Western camp.

A nation of refugees

Jordan's defining social fact is how many of its people are refugees or their descendants. Wave after wave has arrived: Palestinians in 1948 and 1967 (today a very large share of the population, integrated as citizens, unlike in some other host states), Iraqis after 2003, and well over a million Syrians since 2011. For a small country with little water and oil, absorbing all this while keeping the peace is a genuine achievement and a permanent strain.

Don't be confused: "Jordanian" and "Palestinian" overlap in Jordan. A large portion of Jordanian citizens are of Palestinian origin. The relationship between Jordanians of East Bank "tribal" origin and those of Palestinian origin is a quiet but real feature of Jordanian politics. It is not the same as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

How Jordan stays stable

Jordan has no oil wealth to speak of and sits among conflicts, yet it endures. The reasons usually given: a respected monarchy with religious legitimacy (the Hashemites' lineage and their custodianship of Muslim and Christian holy sites in Jerusalem), a loyal army and security service, careful diplomacy that keeps Jordan useful to everyone (a close US ally, at peace with Israel, on speaking terms with most), and substantial foreign aid. The trade-off is a limited democracy: the king holds real power, and political freedoms are constrained.

How people lived: daily life and lifestyle

Jordanian life blends a proud Bedouin heritage with a modern, educated society centered on Amman. Tribal and family bonds remain strong, especially among East Bank Jordanians, and hospitality is a defining value: a guest is honoured, fed generously, and never rushed. The desert looms large in the national imagination, from the dramatic sandstone valleys of Wadi Rum to the Bedouin tradition of tents, coffee, and storytelling. Amman, by contrast, is a fast-growing, hilly modern capital with cafés, universities, and a young, connected population. Pride in Petra, one of the New Seven Wonders of the World, runs deep.

Music, the arts, and notable people

Jordan's traditional culture features Bedouin chant and poetry, the line dance dabke at every wedding, and the samer, a communal celebration dance. A modern arts and music scene thrives in Amman. The country's most prominent public figures are its royals, who are unusually visible internationally:

• King Hussein, the long-reigning monarch who became a global statesman.
• King Abdullah II, the current king.
• Queen Noor (American-born, King Hussein's widow) and Queen Rania (of Palestinian origin, King Abdullah II's wife), both well known for international advocacy.

Religion, coexistence, and minorities

Jordanians are mostly Sunni Muslim, and Jordan has a comparatively good record of treating its minorities:

• A small, long-established Christian minority (Greek Orthodox, Catholic, and others) is well integrated, holds reserved seats in parliament, and is prominent in business and the professions.
• The Circassians and Chechens, Muslims whose ancestors fled the Caucasus in the 19th century, are a respected community closely tied to the monarchy; Circassians traditionally form the royal guard.
• Smaller Druze, Armenian, and Baha'i communities also live in Jordan.

Coexistence is generally peaceful and is actively promoted by the state as part of Jordan's identity, though, as in the region generally, religion still shapes personal status law.

Food: Jordan's own table

Jordan's cuisine has its own clear identity, anchored by one unmistakable national dish:

• Mansaf, the national dish and a national symbol: lamb cooked in a tangy sauce of jameed (dried fermented yoghurt), served over rice and flatbread, traditionally eaten by hand from a large shared platter. Sharing mansaf is a deep expression of hospitality and belonging, served at weddings, funerals, and every important gathering.
• Maqluba, the flipped rice-and-vegetable pot, and galayet bandora, a simple, beloved skillet of tomatoes, garlic, and chili scooped up with bread.
• Mujaddara (lentils and rice with crisp onions), grilled meats, and, for dessert, knafeh and other syrup-soaked sweets, with strong coffee or tea.

Education and the IQ question

Jordan has invested heavily in education, with high literacy and a strong university sector, and it exports skilled professionals across the Gulf. On "national IQ," commonly cited datasets list Jordan in roughly the low-to-mid 80s, but, as the education and IQ chapter explains, these numbers rely on weak data and are rejected by mainstream science. They do not measure the ability of a population.

Everyday life: relationships, family, and home

Family and tribe sit at the heart of Jordanian life, and this is true across the country's mix of East Bank tribal Jordanians, Jordanians of Palestinian origin, and smaller communities. People commonly meet through extended family, neighbourhood, university, or work, and marriage is usually treated as a joining of two families rather than two individuals alone. An engagement is typically marked by a family visit to ask for the bride's hand, followed by a formal agreement that includes the mahr, a marriage gift or sum from the groom to the bride that is written into the contract and is legally hers. Weddings are often large, joyful events with music, the dabke line dance, and many guests, since inviting widely is itself a sign of respect.

Households frequently include or stay close to grandparents, and respect for elders is strong: their opinions carry weight, and caring for ageing parents is seen as a duty rather than an option. Children are raised with a clear sense of belonging to a wider family and tribe, and hospitality is taught early. A guest is honoured, fed generously, and never made to feel rushed; refusing food or coffee outright can seem cold, so people accept at least a little. Bedouin heritage shapes these values, with coffee, generosity, and loyalty to kin held up as ideals even by city dwellers. Homes are kept clean and shoes are sometimes removed indoors. Cats are common around towns and are generally tolerated or fed, while dogs are more often kept for guarding or herding than as house pets, though attitudes vary by household. The overall social fabric is generally conservative but stable and welcoming.

School, work, and the economy

Jordan places a strong emphasis on education, and literacy is high. Schooling is free and compulsory in the basic years, generally starting around age six, followed by a secondary stage that ends with the Tawjihi, the national exam whose results heavily shape university and career options. The country has many universities and a large pool of skilled graduates. Because the home economy cannot absorb all of them, a notable number of Jordanian doctors, engineers, teachers, and other professionals work across the Gulf and send money home.

Working hours commonly run from morning into the late afternoon, with Friday (the main day of prayer) and often Saturday as the weekend. Government offices and many businesses keep shorter hours during Ramadan. The economy is shaped by what Jordan lacks: it has few natural resources, little oil, and scarce water. It leans instead on services, tourism (Petra and the Dead Sea above all), exports of skilled labour and the remittances workers send back, phosphates and potash from the Dead Sea, and significant foreign aid from Western and Gulf partners. Hosting very large refugee populations, while a humanitarian achievement, adds real strain on jobs, water, schools, and public budgets.

Language, idioms, and words to know

The language is Arabic, and everyday speech is the Jordanian dialect, part of the broader Levantine Arabic family spoken across the region. Formal or written Arabic (Modern Standard Arabic) is used in news, schools, and official settings. A few useful phrases:

• as-salamu alaykum: "peace be upon you," the standard greeting (reply: wa alaykum as-salam).
• marhaba: "hello."
• shukran: "thank you."
• tfaddal (to a man) or tfaddali (to a woman): "please, go ahead" or "help yourself," used when offering food, a seat, or entry.
• inshallah: "God willing," used about anything in the future.

Arabic is rich in proverbs. A couple of widely known ones:

• "al-jar qabl al-dar": "the neighbour before the house," meaning choose good neighbours before you choose the home itself.
• "one hand does not clap" (al-yad al-wahida la tusaffiq): nothing meaningful is achieved alone, you need cooperation.

(If you are ever unsure of an exact wording, it is fine to describe a saying's meaning rather than quote it precisely.)

Famous places to know

• Petra: the spectacular Nabataean city carved into rose-coloured rock, a New Seven Wonders site and Jordan's most famous landmark.
• Wadi Rum: a vast desert of red sand and towering sandstone, long home to Bedouin and a favourite for camping and film shoots.
• Jerash: one of the best-preserved Roman provincial cities anywhere, with colonnaded streets, theatres, and temples.
• The Dead Sea: the lowest point on Earth's land surface, so salty that swimmers float, bordered by mineral-rich mud and resorts.
• Amman: the hilly modern capital, layering Roman ruins, busy markets, and lively cafés.
• The baptism site on the Jordan River (Bethany Beyond the Jordan): revered by Christians as the place where Jesus was baptised, a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Fitting in: visiting, impressing people, and being a good citizen

Hospitality runs deep, and being invited to someone's home, especially to share mansaf, is a real honour. Mansaf is traditionally eaten from a large shared platter, standing or seated, using the right hand to form small balls of rice and meat (a spoon is acceptable for guests who prefer it). Eating and passing food with the right hand is the polite norm. When offered coffee or tea, accepting at least a small cup is courteous; with traditional Bedouin coffee, gently shaking the cup signals you have had enough. Dress is best kept modest, particularly at religious sites and outside resort areas, with shoulders and knees covered. During Ramadan, avoid eating, drinking, or smoking in public during daylight as a sign of respect.

Jordan is stable and notably tourist-friendly, with e-visas and the Jordan Pass (which can bundle the visa fee with entry to Petra and other sites), but exact entry rules and prices change, so check official sources before travelling. Politically, the monarchy is widely respected, and it is wise to speak about the king and royal family with respect; regional politics, especially anything touching Israel and the Palestinians, is felt personally by many, so listen more than you lecture. Making a good impression mostly comes down to warmth, patience, accepting hospitality graciously, learning a few Arabic greetings, and showing genuine interest in Jordan's history and landscapes. None of this is legal advice; verify official requirements yourself.

Suggested reading, news, and links

Books. For history, look for reputable general histories of modern Jordan and the Hashemite dynasty (search well-reviewed academic and general titles rather than relying on a single name). Both King Abdullah II and the late King Hussein wrote memoirs that give the monarchy's own perspective; reading them alongside independent histories gives a fuller picture.

News. For international coverage, the BBC and Reuters are reliable starting points. Jordanian outlets include The Jordan Times (English-language) and Roya (broadcast and online); note that press freedom in Jordan is limited, so coverage of sensitive domestic and royal matters can be cautious.

Links.

• Visit Jordan, the official national tourism site (visitjordan.com).
• The BBC country profile for Jordan, a concise neutral overview.
• Britannica, for an encyclopaedic summary of Jordan's history and geography.

Today, and how to talk about it

Jordan in the mid-2020s remains stable but economically pressured: high unemployment, scarce water, big refugee numbers, and the shockwaves of the Gaza war next door, where public sympathy for Palestinians runs very high.

If you talk with Jordanians: hospitality is central, and an invitation to eat, especially mansaf, is a sincere honour. Pride in Jordan's stability, its history (Petra above all), and the monarchy is common, though people also discuss economic frustrations. Given how many Jordanians are of Palestinian origin, the Israeli-Palestinian issue is felt personally by many.

We close the country chapters with the region's bridge to Europe, the successor of the Ottoman Empire and a power in its own right: Turkey. 👉

Turkey

TL;DR. Turkey is the region's bridge to Europe and the direct successor of the Ottoman Empire, yet a century ago it reinvented itself as a secular republic under Mustafa Kemal Atatürk. Big, populous, and powerful, it is a NATO member that long sought to join the EU, and it spends much of its energy debating how secular or religious, how Eastern or Western, it should be. Since 2003 it has been dominated by Recep Tayyip Erdogan, under whom it has grown more assertive abroad and, critics say, more authoritarian at home.

Key takeaways

• Turks are a distinct people: Muslim but neither Arab nor Persian, with their own language.
• Modern Turkey was built to be secular by Atatürk after the empire's fall.
• It is a NATO member, a major regional power, and a balancer between the West and Russia.
• Its defining domestic issues are the secular-religious divide and the Kurdish question.
• Its minority history includes great sensitivity, above all the Armenian Genocide of 1915, which Turkey officially disputes.

Main events at a glance

The land and the deep past

Anatolia (Asian Turkey) is one of the oldest stages of human civilization. It held the Hittite empire, the legendary city of Troy, Greek coastal cities, the wealthy Lydians (who minted some of the first coins), and was conquered in turn by Persians, Alexander the Great, and Rome. When Rome split, Anatolia became the core of the Christian Byzantine Empire, ruled from Constantinople, the greatest Christian city for a thousand years.

Turkic peoples arrived from Central Asia. The Seljuk Turks defeated the Byzantines at Manzikert in 1071, opening Anatolia to Turkish settlement. Out of the patchwork that followed rose the Ottomans, whose four-century empire is covered in its own chapter. The capture of Constantinople in 1453 ended Byzantium and made the city the Ottoman capital.

From empire to republic

After the Ottomans lost World War I (allied with Germany and Austria-Hungary), foreign powers occupied Anatolia and planned to partition it. A nationalist resistance led by the general Mustafa Kemal won the Turkish War of Independence, fighting above all an invading Greek army (with the new Turkish movement receiving some arms from Soviet Russia), and in 1923 proclaimed the Republic of Turkey, with Kemal as first president. He was later given the surname Atatürk, "father of the Turks."

Atatürk launched one of history's most sweeping top-down transformations, to build a modern, secular, Western-facing nation-state:

• Abolished the caliphate (1924), ending the institution that had symbolised Islamic leadership for centuries.
• Made the state firmly secular (laiklik), separating religion from government.
• Replaced the Arabic script with the Latin alphabet, reformed the language and dress, and extended the vote to women relatively early.

This secular, nationalist legacy, Kemalism, defined Turkey for generations, with the army acting as its self-appointed guardian.

Don't be confused: Turkey is Muslim but not Arab, and officially secular. Turks are a distinct people with their own language, neither Arab nor Persian. The population is overwhelmingly Muslim (mostly Sunni), but the state was built to be secular, a defining difference from Saudi Arabia or Iran. How religious public life should be is Turkey's central, ongoing argument.

The modern republic and its alliances

Turkey's path since Atatürk has been turbulent but never colonised or broken by a neighbour. Its alignments:

• The army staged or forced several coups (1960, 1971, 1980, and a "soft" one in 1997) whenever it judged secularism or order at risk.
• Turkey joined NATO in 1952, firmly allying with the United States and Western Europe against the Soviet Union in the Cold War, and even sent troops to the Korean War.
• A long, painful conflict with Kurdish insurgents (the PKK), beginning in 1984, has killed tens of thousands. Kurds are Turkey's largest minority.
• In 1974 Turkey invaded northern Cyprus after a Greek-nationalist coup on the island, leading to its still-unresolved division and decades of tension with Greece (a fellow NATO member).
• In Syria's war, Turkey backed certain rebel groups against Assad while also fighting the Kurdish forces there, whom it links to the PKK, and it hosts the world's largest refugee population (over three million Syrians).
• More recently Turkey has played a careful balancing act, a NATO member that nonetheless bought Russian air-defence systems and brokered deals between Russia and Ukraine, asserting an independent course.

The Erdogan era

Since 2003, Turkish politics has been dominated by Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his AKP, a party with roots in political Islam:

• Early on, strong economic growth and reforms that reduced the army's political grip won broad support and international praise.
• Over time, power concentrated. After a failed military coup in 2016, the government carried out a vast purge of the bureaucracy, military, judiciary, media, and universities. A 2017 referendum replaced the parliamentary system with a powerful executive presidency.
• Critics describe a slide toward authoritarianism, with pressure on the press, courts, and opposition; supporters credit Erdogan with empowering pious, long-sidelined Turks and raising Turkey's global standing.
• Recent strains include high inflation and the devastating 2023 earthquake that killed over 50,000 people. Erdogan won re-election in 2023, the republic's centenary.

How people lived: daily life and lifestyle

Daily life in Turkey is famously social and is split along the country's central fault line. Cosmopolitan, secular Istanbul and Izmir feel European, with bars, galleries, and beach resorts, while much of conservative Anatolia is religious and traditional, and the two often vote and live very differently. What unites nearly everyone is tea (çay), drunk all day from tulip-shaped glasses, and the kahvaltı, the lavish Turkish breakfast spread. Other constants: passionate devotion to football, the hammam (Turkish bath) tradition, strong family ties, and a deep café and conversation culture. Religion ranges from devout observance to thoroughly secular, and how visibly Islam belongs in public life (the headscarf in state institutions, for example) has been one of the country's most charged debates.

Music, the arts, and notable people

Turkish culture is rich and layered. It runs from refined Ottoman classical music and the haunting Sufi tradition of the Mevlevi order, the "whirling dervishes" who spin in meditation to the reed flute (linked to the medieval poet Rumi of Konya), to the bağlama (saz)-driven folk music of Anatolia, to arabesk, modern Turkish pop (the global star Tarkan, the songwriter Sezen Aksu), and Anatolian rock.

Notable people across the centuries:

• Rumi (Mevlana), the 13th-century Sufi poet whose work is read worldwide.
• Mimar Sinan, the great Ottoman architect of Istanbul's grand mosques.
• Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the republic's founder.
• Orhan Pamuk, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature (2006), and the poet Nazım Hikmet.

Religion, coexistence, and minorities

Turkey is overwhelmingly Sunni Muslim, but its minority history is significant and, in places, painful. Honest treatment means naming both coexistence and persecution:

• Alevis, a large heterodox community (perhaps 10 to 20 million) related to Shia Islam and known for a more liberal, music-centered practice, are Turkey's biggest religious minority. They have faced discrimination and deadly violence, including the Maraş killings (1978) and the Sivas hotel fire (1993) that killed 35 Alevi intellectuals. Their houses of worship (cemevis) are still not granted the same official status as mosques.
• Armenians. Once a large Christian community, devastated by the 1915 genocide (see the Ottoman chapter); a small community remains. Turkey officially disputes the genocide label, making this the country's most sensitive historical issue.
• Greeks. Anatolia's ancient Greek Orthodox population was almost entirely removed by the 1923 population exchange with Greece, and the small remaining community in Istanbul was driven out by discriminatory measures, including the 1942 wealth tax (Varlık Vergisi) that targeted minorities and the 1955 anti-Greek Istanbul pogrom.
• Jews. A historic Sephardic community, welcomed by the Ottomans after their expulsion from Spain in 1492, once thrived; it is now much smaller, also hit by the 1942 wealth tax.
• Kurds, the largest minority (roughly a fifth of the population), are Muslims with their own language and identity. For decades the state suppressed Kurdish identity (calling them "Mountain Turks" and banning the language in public life), and the PKK conflict caused great suffering. Millions of Kurds are also fully integrated into Turkish society, including in business and politics.

Food: Turkey's own table

Turkish cuisine is one of the world's great culinary traditions, heir to Ottoman court cooking and blending Central Asian, Balkan, and Anatolian influences. It is distinct, vast, and regional:

• Kebabs in many forms: the spicy Adana, the Urfa, the stacked döner, and the İskender (döner over bread with tomato sauce and yoghurt).
• Meze spreads, mantı (tiny dumplings under garlic yoghurt), börek (flaky filled pastries), pide and lahmacun (Turkish flatbreads), dolma (stuffed vegetables), and köfte (meatballs).
• A famous sweet tradition: baklava (with deep Ottoman roots, Gaziantep is the acknowledged capital), lokum (Turkish delight), and künefe (a hot cheese pastry).
• Turkish coffee, thick and unfiltered (and culturally so important it lends its name to fortune-telling from the grounds), alongside the ever-present çay (tea), and the grand Turkish breakfast.

Education and the IQ question

Turkey has a large education system and a growing research and industrial base, including a notable defence-technology sector. On "national IQ," commonly cited datasets place Turkey in roughly the high 80s, but, as the education and IQ chapter explains, these figures rest on flawed methodology and are rejected by mainstream science; they are not a measure of a population's ability.

Everyday life: relationships, family, and home

How people meet and marry varies sharply across the country. In big, secular cities like Istanbul, Izmir, and Ankara, a modern dating culture is common, with apps, cafés, and mixed social circles. In more conservative, religious parts of Anatolia, courtship tends to be more traditional and family-involved, with introductions and matchmaking still playing a role and parents closely engaged in a child's choice of partner. Engagements (nişan) and weddings are major social events. One well-known custom is the pinning of gold coins and gold jewelry onto the bride and groom as gifts during the wedding celebration, a practical way for the community to help a new couple start out.

Family is the center of life, and respect for elders runs deep. A widely practiced gesture of respect is to kiss an older relative's hand and then touch it lightly to one's own forehead, especially during religious holidays. Many households keep close multigenerational ties, with grandparents involved in raising children and adult children staying in regular contact with parents. Children are generally treated with a lot of warmth and indulgence in public.

There is a notable public affection for animals, especially the street cats and dogs of cities like Istanbul, which are widely fed, sheltered, and looked after by ordinary people, shopkeepers, and municipalities. Cleanliness and hospitality shape the home: shoes are removed at the door, often swapped for indoor slippers, and guests are offered tea or coffee at once. The hammam (Turkish bath) is an old tradition of steam, washing, and scrubbing that survives both as a social ritual and a tourist experience.

School, work, and the economy

Schooling is compulsory for twelve years, split into primary, middle, and high school stages. The system is marked by an intense university entrance exam culture: placement in good universities depends heavily on nationwide standardized exams, and many students spend years in private cram courses (dershane) and study late to prepare, with families investing heavily in tutoring.

Working hours are typically full weekdays with a standard work week, though hours and formality vary between large corporate employers, small family businesses, and the large informal sector. Relationships and personal trust matter a great deal in business, and meetings tend to begin with tea and conversation.

Turkey has a large, diversified economy. It spans manufacturing (including a major automotive and white-goods industry), textiles and clothing, agriculture (it is a leading producer of hazelnuts, dried fruit, and many crops), construction, a huge tourism sector, and a fast-growing defense-technology industry known for drones and military vehicles. In recent years the country has struggled with very high inflation and a weakening currency, which has squeezed household budgets even as exports and tourism have stayed strong.

Language, idioms, and words to know

The national language is Turkish, spoken by nearly everyone. It is a Turkic language, not related to Arabic or Persian, though centuries of contact left it with many borrowed words. Since Atatürk's reforms in 1928 it has been written in the Latin alphabet rather than the Arabic script. Kurdish and several other community languages are also spoken, mainly in the southeast.

A few useful phrases:

• Merhaba, hello.
• Tesekkür ederim, thank you.
• Lütfen, please.
• Afiyet olsun, an expression said around meals, roughly "may it be good for you" or "enjoy your meal."
• Hosgeldiniz, "welcome," to which the reply is hos bulduk.

Turkish is rich in proverbs (atasözleri). A few well-known ones:

• "Damlaya damlaya göl olur," literally "drop by drop a lake forms," meaning small steady efforts add up.
• "Bir musibet bin nasihatten iyidir," "one calamity teaches more than a thousand pieces of advice," meaning hard experience is the best teacher.

On famous lines: Atatürk's well-documented words "Yurtta sulh, cihanda sulh" ("Peace at home, peace in the world") are widely quoted as a guiding principle of Turkish foreign policy. The poet Nazim Hikmet and the medieval mystic Rumi are both beloved sources of quotation, though Rumi wrote mainly in Persian, so lines attributed to him are usually translations.

Famous places to know

• Istanbul. The great city on the Bosphorus, the strait that splits it between Europe and Asia. Highlights include the Hagia Sophia (a Byzantine cathedral, then a mosque, then a museum, and now a mosque again), the Blue Mosque with its cascading domes, and the sprawling Grand Bazaar, one of the world's oldest covered markets.
• Cappadocia. A surreal landscape of soft volcanic "fairy chimney" rock formations, underground cities, and cave churches, famous today for sunrise hot-air balloon flights.
• Ephesus. One of the best-preserved ancient Greek and Roman cities anywhere, with its grand Library of Celsus and great theater.
• Pamukkale. Dazzling white terraces of mineral-rich water (the name means "cotton castle"), beside the ruins of the spa city of Hierapolis.
• Troy. The site of the legendary city of Homer's Iliad, on the northwest Aegean coast.
• The Mediterranean and Aegean coasts. Long stretches of turquoise sea, beaches, and resort towns, with ancient ruins scattered among them.

Fitting in: visiting, impressing people, and being a good citizen

Turkey is famous for warm hospitality, and a guest is treated with great generosity. Expect to be offered endless glasses of tea, and accepting is a friendly gesture. Practical etiquette:

• Remove your shoes when entering someone's home unless told otherwise.
• Dress modestly at mosques: shoulders and knees covered, and women cover their hair with a scarf; shoes come off before entering.
• At the table, wait for elders to begin, and complimenting the food and the host is always welcome.

Some topics are genuinely sensitive. The Armenian issue (the events of 1915), Kurdish politics, and criticism of the state can all be touchy, and insulting Atatürk or his memory is a criminal offense in Turkey. It is best to listen more than argue on these, and to let hosts steer political talk. Enthusiasm for Turkish food, history, and landscapes is a reliable way to make a good impression.

Turkey is very tourist-friendly, with straightforward e-visas available online for many nationalities and a well-developed tourism industry. Visa rules and exact requirements change, so check official sources before you travel. This is general information, not legal advice.

Suggested reading, news, and links

Books

• Orhan Pamuk, Istanbul: Memories and the City, a personal portrait of the city by Turkey's Nobel laureate; his novels (such as My Name Is Red and Snow) are also widely translated.
• Caroline Finkel, Osman's Dream, a readable single-volume history of the Ottoman Empire.
• For deeper history, look for general histories of modern Turkey and biographies of Atatürk from reputable academic publishers.

News

• International outlets such as the BBC and Reuters cover Turkey in English.
• Turkish English-language outlets include Hurriyet Daily News and Daily Sabah. Note that press freedom in Turkey is constrained, and outlets vary in their political alignment, so it helps to read more than one source.

Links

• The official Turkish tourism site, Go Türkiye (goturkiye.com).
• The BBC country profile for Turkey.
• Britannica's entry on Turkey for an encyclopedic overview.

Today, and how to talk about it

Turkey in the mid-2020s is a powerful, proud, internally polarised country, pulled between secular and religious visions, between Europe and the Middle East, and between democracy and strongman rule, while acting as a serious regional power.

If you talk with Turks: national pride is strong, and Atatürk in particular is revered by many (insulting him is even a crime), though attitudes toward him and toward Erdogan split sharply along the secular-religious line, so tread thoughtfully on party politics. The Armenian question and the Kurdish issue are sensitive. Enthusiasm for Turkey's history, hospitality, and especially its food, tea, and coffee is always a warm starting point.

That completes the countries. The next chapters pull back to the threads that connect them all, starting with the geopolitics. 👉

Geopolitics: power, oil, and outside players

The country chapters each told one nation's story. This chapter zooms out to the forces that connect them. If you understand a handful of rivalries and resources, the region's tangled news starts to make sense as a few overlapping games played at once.

The main fault lines

Think of the modern Middle East as several rivalries layered on the same map.

1. The Arab-Israeli conflict, and specifically Israel and the Palestinians. For decades this was the issue that united Arab states (at least rhetorically) against Israel. It has cooled as a state-to-state war, several Arab countries have made peace or normalised, but the unresolved Palestinian question remains a powerful regional and global flashpoint, as the Gaza war from 2023 showed. See the Palestine and Israel chapters.

2. Saudi Arabia versus Iran. This is the central rivalry of the past two generations. It is partly sectarian (Sunni-led Saudi Arabia versus Shia-led Iran), partly ethnic (Arab versus Persian), and mostly a straightforward contest for regional leadership. The two rarely fight directly; instead they back opposite sides in other countries.

3. Turkey's regional ambition. Turkey, the old imperial power, has reasserted itself as an independent player, intervening in Syria and Libya, projecting influence through trade, religion, drones, and diplomacy, and pursuing its own interests against the Kurds.

4. The Kurdish question. The Kurds, a large people of perhaps 30 to 40 million with their own language, are spread across Turkey, Syria, Iraq, and Iran, with no state of their own. Their pursuit of rights or autonomy crosses every border and entangles all four governments, a permanent regional undercurrent.

Don't be confused: "Sunni vs Shia" is a real divide but an overused label. It is genuine theology and genuine community identity, but in geopolitics it is largely a banner for the Saudi-Iran power struggle. Plenty of conflicts here are not about religion at all, and plenty of Sunnis and Shia are allies. Reach for the label carefully.

Proxy wars: how the rivalries play out

Because direct war between big states is rare and costly, the rivalries are fought through local allies. The same outside backers keep appearing:

This is why a single event, say, the Gaza war, can ripple instantly into Lebanon, Yemen, and the Red Sea: the same networks are linked across the whole region.

The resources that drive it all

Oil and gas. The Gulf, above all Saudi Arabia, holds a large share of the world's oil, which is why this region matters so much to everyone else. Oil wealth funds states, buys influence, and draws in outside powers determined to keep energy flowing. The producers' cartel OPEC, led by Saudi Arabia, can move the world economy by adjusting output. The Gulf monarchies are now using oil money to build sovereign wealth funds, global investments, and post-oil economies.

Water. Less famous but increasingly decisive. Rivers and aquifers cross borders (the Tigris, Euphrates, and Jordan), and dams upstream affect neighbours downstream. In a drying region, water is a growing source of tension and a real constraint on every country here.

Chokepoints. Geography concentrates power at narrow passages: the Suez Canal, the Strait of Hormuz (the Gulf's oil gateway), and the Bab al-Mandab by Yemen (targeted in the Red Sea shipping crisis). Whoever can threaten these can threaten the world economy.

The outside players

The region has never been left to itself:

• The United States has been the dominant outside power since the mid-20th century: ally of Israel, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and the Gulf monarchies, guarantor of oil flows, and rival of Iran. Its influence is large but, many argue, declining as it turns attention elsewhere.
• Russia is the other historic heavyweight, long tied to Syria; its intervention saved Assad for a decade, and it sells arms and brokers deals widely.
• China is the rising economic force, the biggest buyer of Gulf oil, an investor across the region, and the surprise broker of the 2023 Saudi-Iran détente. It seeks influence mainly through trade rather than military bases.
• Europe matters as a trade partner, an aid donor, the destination of refugee flows, and, in Britain and France's case, the former mandate powers whose old decisions still echo.

Ideologies and institutions

Three broad political visions have competed across the modern era, and the contest is not settled:

• Secular Arab nationalism (pan-Arabism, Baathism), dominant in the mid-20th century, now weakened.
• Political Islam, in many forms, from the Muslim Brotherhood to Iran's clerical state to extremist groups like ISIS.
• Conservative monarchy, the Gulf model, blending tradition, oil wealth, and cautious modernisation.

Regional bodies exist but are weak: the Arab League (all Arab states, often divided), the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC, the six Gulf monarchies, more cohesive), and OPEC (oil producers, the most effective of the three at shaping outcomes).

Recent shifts to watch

A few trends define the mid-2020s:

• Normalisation with Israel. The 2020 Abraham Accords and continuing talks signal that some Arab states now prioritise countering Iran and economic ties over the old solidarity on Palestine, though the Gaza war complicated this.
• De-escalation among rivals. The 2023 Saudi-Iran deal and a general Gulf turn toward business over confrontation suggest fatigue with proxy wars.
• The fall of Assad (2024) reshuffled the board, weakening Iran and Russia's position in the Levant and raising new uncertainties.
• A multipolar field. With US attention divided and China and Russia active, the region's states increasingly play outside powers off against each other rather than picking one patron.

Don't be confused: alliances here are fluid. Today's enemies can be tomorrow's trading partners. States act on interest, not fixed friendship, so expect the lines on this page to keep moving.

Geopolitics is heavy. The next thread is the most delicious one in the book, and a surprisingly sharp lens on identity: food. 👉

Food and where it comes from

Food is the happiest way into this region, and a surprisingly sharp lens on its history and identity. The same dishes appear from Istanbul to Sana'a, because the same empires, trade routes, and migrations carried them. And because food is identity, people argue fiercely about who invented what. This chapter is a tour of the table and those friendly (and not-so-friendly) fights.

Why the whole region eats alike

For four centuries most of this region shared one kitchen: the Ottoman one, itself built on Arab, Persian, Byzantine, and Central Asian foundations. Trade routes brought rice from the east, spices from India and Yemen, coffee from Ethiopia by way of Yemen, and tomatoes and peppers from the Americas. The result is a deeply shared cuisine with strong local accents.

The common building blocks:

• Wheat, as flatbread (the universal utensil and plate) and as bulgur (cracked wheat) in salads and kibbeh.
• Chickpeas, the base of hummus and falafel.
• Olive oil, especially in the Levant, where the olive tree is almost sacred.
• Lamb and chicken; rice for festive dishes; yoghurt in many forms.
• Spices and herbs: cumin, sumac, the za'atar blend, mint, parsley, cardamom, and Aleppo pepper.

The mezze table

The signature way to eat in the Levant is mezze: many small plates shared slowly around a table. A spread might include hummus (chickpea and tahini dip), baba ghanoush (smoky eggplant), tabbouleh (a parsley, mint, and bulgur salad, heavy on the herbs), fattoush (salad with toasted bread), stuffed grape leaves, kibbeh, and grilled meats, with warm bread throughout. Mezze is not just food; it is an event, built for conversation and hospitality.

The great origin debates

Here is the fun, and the friction. Because these foods are centuries old and predate the modern borders, several countries claim them, and the claims carry real national pride and politics.

• Hummus. Beloved across the entire region. Lebanese, Palestinians, Syrians, and others all consider it theirs; it features in a genuine rivalry (Lebanon and Israel have competed for "world's largest hummus" records). The honest answer: it is an old Levantine dish with no single national inventor. When it is marketed abroad as "Israeli hummus," many Arabs object, seeing a shared heritage being relabelled, which is why hummus is sometimes only half-jokingly called a front in the conflict.

• Falafel. Fried chickpea (or, in Egypt, fava bean) fritters. Egypt claims a very old version (ta'meya); the Levantine chickpea form is the one most know. Falafel became a popular street food in Israel too, and its labelling abroad sparks the same debate as hummus.

• Knafeh (kunafa). A hot cheese pastry soaked in syrup. The most famous version comes from Nablus in Palestine (knafeh Nabulsiyeh), and it is a strong point of Palestinian culinary pride, though it is loved and made across the Levant and Turkey (as künefe).

• Baklava. Layered phyllo, nuts, and syrup. Claimed by Turkey (with deep Ottoman roots), Greece, and the wider region. It is genuinely a shared Ottoman-era sweet, with each culture's own style.

• Coffee. This one has a clear origin story. Coffee as a drink was popularised in Yemen (the port of Mocha gave its name to the bean and drink), spreading through the Ottoman world, where Turkish coffee, finely ground and unfiltered, became an institution. The Arabic cardamom-spiced coffee of the Gulf is a related tradition.

Don't be confused: "who invented it" rarely has a clean answer. Most of these dishes are older than the modern countries arguing over them. The most accurate, and most peaceful, label is usually Levantine, Ottoman, or Middle Eastern rather than any one nation. The arguments are really about identity and recognition, which is exactly why they matter to people.

Local specialties, country by country

A quick map of signature dishes from the country chapters:

The culture of eating

A few habits run across the whole region and are worth knowing before you sit at a table:

• Hospitality is sacred. Guests are honoured with abundant food; refusing outright can offend. Expect to be urged to eat more, and more.
• Bread is respected. It is often the utensil and is treated with a near-reverence; wasting it is frowned upon.
• Sharing is the default. Many dishes come on a common platter and are eaten by hand (the right hand) or with bread.
• Coffee and tea are rituals, not just drinks: offered to every visitor, central to welcome, business, and mourning alike.
• Ramadan reshapes the calendar: a month of daytime fasting followed by the communal evening meal, iftar, a high point of food and togetherness.

Eat first, argue about origins later. Food is the easiest bridge into any conversation in this region. The last thread chapter tackles the topic you raised about intelligence and education, and why the numbers need such care. 👉

Education, knowledge, and the IQ question

You asked to include "IQ" for each country, and you asked for reliable facts. Those two requests pull against each other, so this chapter handles the topic head-on, in one place. It does three things: explains why national-IQ numbers are scientifically discredited, shows the commonly cited figures anyway (as you requested) with the warnings they require, and then points to the measures of knowledge that actually mean something, where this region has a deep and proud record.

First, the honest warning

The idea that you can assign a country a single "IQ" and rank nations by intelligence is rejected by mainstream science. The best-known national-IQ datasets (associated with the psychologist Richard Lynn and collaborators) have been criticised by many researchers as methodologically unsound. The core problems:

• Terrible samples. Many country "scores" come from tiny, unrepresentative groups, sometimes a few dozen children, or one city, or one school, then treated as a whole nation. For several countries the number is an estimate or a guess based on neighbours.
• The tests are not neutral. IQ tests are shaped by language, schooling style, and cultural familiarity. People with less exposure to formal testing score lower for reasons that have nothing to do with underlying ability.
• The Flynn effect. Measured IQ scores have risen dramatically across the world over the 20th century (by roughly three points a decade in many places) as nutrition, health, and education improved. This proves the scores track environment and development, not a fixed trait, and that any single snapshot is just that.
• Confounded with poverty. National scores correlate strongly with wealth, nutrition, disease burden, and years of schooling. They mostly re-measure development, then mislabel it as innate intelligence.
• A troubling history. The project of ranking populations by intelligence grew out of, and has repeatedly been used to justify, racism and eugenics. That history is a reason for extra caution, not a footnote.

Don't be confused: this is not "we can't measure anything." Individual IQ tests have some predictive use within a single society. The discredited leap is using them to rank entire nations or to claim that a people is inherently more or less intelligent. The first is a limited tool; the second is pseudoscience.

The commonly cited figures, with caveats

You asked to see the numbers, so here they are, drawn from the disputed Lynn-type datasets. Treat every figure as unreliable. They are presented as ranges to avoid a false sense of precision, and the right way to read them is as a rough echo of poverty, conflict, and access to schooling, not as a measure of any population's ability.

Notice that the ranking simply mirrors wealth and stability: the most developed and peaceful places sit highest, the poorest and most war-torn lowest. That pattern is exactly what you would expect if these numbers measure development and test conditions rather than intelligence. Reading them any other way is not supported by evidence.

What actually measures knowledge

If the goal is reliable insight into education and intellect, far better measures exist, and here the region's record is genuinely impressive, past and present.

A historical golden age. During the European early Middle Ages, the Islamic world led the planet in science and learning. The House of Wisdom in Abbasid Baghdad translated and advanced Greek, Persian, and Indian knowledge. Scholars of this region and era gave us major advances in algebra (the word is Arabic, from al-jabr), medicine (Ibn Sina, known in Europe as Avicenna), optics (Ibn al-Haytham, a founder of the scientific method), astronomy, chemistry, and philosophy. Many star names and scientific terms in English are Arabic. This was one of the great intellectual flowerings in human history.

Ancient and enduring centers of learning. The region hosts some of the world's oldest institutions: Al-Qarawiyyin (founded in Morocco, often cited as the oldest existing university), Al-Azhar in Cairo (a center of Sunni scholarship for over a thousand years), and the historic scholarly traditions of Damascus, Sana'a, Jerusalem, and Istanbul.

Modern, meaningful metrics. Today the useful indicators include:

• Literacy and schooling. These vary widely with development and war. The Gulf states, Turkey, Jordan, Lebanon, and Israel have high literacy and large university sectors; war has shattered schooling in Syria and Yemen, leaving a generation behind, a tragedy of circumstance, not capacity.
• Research and innovation. Israel has an outsized scientific and high-tech output and many Nobel laureates relative to its size. Turkey and the Gulf are investing heavily in universities and research. Talented people from across the region contribute massively to science and medicine worldwide, often in diaspora.
• The brain drain. A real regional challenge: conflict and limited opportunity push many of the most educated people to emigrate, which says everything about circumstance and nothing about ability.

The takeaway

Treat any "national IQ" claim about these countries, or any countries, with deep skepticism. The numbers are weak data dressed up as science, and they mostly retell the story of who is rich and at peace. The honest, reliable picture is one of a region with an extraordinary intellectual heritage, very real present-day talent, and educational outcomes that rise and fall with peace and prosperity.

The remaining chapters are reference tools: a timeline, a glossary, and a guide to talking about all of this. 👉

A regional timeline

One scannable timeline for the whole region. Use the search box to jump to any entry. Dates before the common era are marked BCE; everything else is CE. Many ancient dates are approximate.

The ancient and classical world

The rise of Islam and the caliphates

The Ottoman centuries

World War I and the mandates

Independence, Israel, and the Arab-Israeli wars

Revolutions, civil wars, and the late 20th century

The 21st century

Next, a glossary of the terms scattered through these pages. 👉

Glossary

Plain-language definitions of the people, places, terms, and groups used in this book. Use the search box to find any of them in context.

A to C

Abbasids. The caliphate (750 to 1258) ruling from Baghdad, presiding over a golden age of science and culture.

Alawites. A minority faith related to Shia Islam, concentrated in coastal Syria; the community of the former ruling Assad family.

Aliyah. Hebrew for Jewish immigration to the land of Israel.

Aramaic. An ancient regional language, once the common tongue of the Near East and the language Jesus is thought to have spoken; still used liturgically by some Christian churches.

Atatürk (Mustafa Kemal). Founder and first president of the Republic of Turkey (1923); architect of its secular, Western-facing transformation.

Baathism. A secular Arab nationalist and socialist ideology; the ruling movement in modern Syria (and formerly Iraq).

Balfour Declaration (1917). A British statement supporting "a national home for the Jewish people" in Palestine while pledging not to harm existing communities.

Bedouin. Traditionally nomadic Arab desert peoples; a strong cultural touchstone across Arabia and the Levant.

Bilad al-Sham. Arabic for Greater Syria, the historic region covering today's Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, Israel, and Jordan.

Byzantine Empire. The eastern, Christian, Greek-speaking continuation of the Roman Empire, ruled from Constantinople until 1453.

Caliph / Caliphate. A caliph is a successor to the Prophet Muhammad as leader of the Muslim community; a caliphate is the state he leads. The institution was abolished in 1924.

Confessionalism. A political system, used in Lebanon, that distributes power among religious communities by formula.

Crusades. European Christian military campaigns (1095 to 1291) that seized parts of the Levantine coast before being driven out.

D to I

Diaspora. A people dispersed outside their homeland, used here especially of Jews and of Lebanese and Palestinians.

Druze. A distinct faith that grew out of Islam about a thousand years ago, with communities in Lebanon, Syria, and Israel.

Fatah. The secular nationalist Palestinian party that dominates the PLO and the Palestinian Authority.

GCC (Gulf Cooperation Council). The bloc of six Gulf Arab monarchies, including Saudi Arabia.

Hajj. The annual Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca, a duty for those able to perform it.

Hamas. An Islamist Palestinian movement that has governed Gaza since 2007; designated a terrorist group by Israel, the US, the EU, and others.

Hashemites. The dynasty ruling Jordan, claiming descent from the Prophet Muhammad; they led the Arab Revolt.

Hezbollah. A Shia armed movement and political party in Lebanon, backed by Iran.

Hijra. The Prophet Muhammad's migration from Mecca to Medina in 622, the start of the Islamic calendar.

Intifada. Arabic for "uprising"; refers to two major Palestinian uprisings (1987 to 1993 and 2000 to 2005).

ISIS. An extremist group that seized territory in Syria and Iraq and declared a "caliphate" (2014), destroyed militarily by 2019; not recognised by mainstream Muslims.

J to O

Janissaries. The elite Ottoman infantry, historically raised from Christian-born boys converted to Islam.

Kemalism. The secular, nationalist ideology of Atatürk's republic.

Kurds. A large stateless people (around 30 to 40 million) spread across Turkey, Syria, Iraq, and Iran, with their own language and identity.

Levant. The eastern Mediterranean coast and hinterland; see Bilad al-Sham.

Mamluks. A soldier-ruler caste based in Egypt that dominated the region from the 1250s until the Ottoman conquest.

Mandate. Post-World War I European administration of former Ottoman lands under the League of Nations (British and French).

Maronites. An ancient Eastern Catholic Christian community centered in Lebanon, central to its history and politics.

Mezze. A spread of many small shared dishes, the signature Levantine way of eating.

Millet. The Ottoman system that organised society into self-governing religious communities.

Nakba. Arabic for "catastrophe"; the Palestinian term for the 1948 displacement of most Palestinian Arabs.

OPEC. The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, the oil producers' cartel led by Saudi Arabia.

Oslo Accords (1993 to 1995). Agreements between Israel and the PLO that created the Palestinian Authority and mutual recognition.

Ottoman Empire. The Turkish-led empire (~1300 to 1922) that ruled most of this region for about four centuries.

P to Z

Palestinian Authority (PA). The body created by Oslo to govern parts of the West Bank and (once) Gaza; led by Fatah.

Pan-Arabism. The idea that Arabic-speaking peoples form one nation that should unite; strongest in the mid-20th century.

PLO (Palestine Liberation Organization). The umbrella body representing Palestinian nationalism, long led by Yasser Arafat.

Quran. The holy scripture of Islam, believed by Muslims to be the word of God revealed to Muhammad.

Ramadan. The Islamic month of daytime fasting, ending with the festival of Eid.

Rashidun. The first four caliphs after Muhammad ("the rightly guided").

Salafism / Wahhabism. A strict, puritanical Sunni reform movement, historically tied to the Saudi state.

Sasanians. The pre-Islamic Persian empire, Byzantium's great rival.

Sufism. The mystical, inward tradition within Islam.

Sunni / Shia. The two main branches of Islam, originally divided over who should lead after Muhammad; Sunnis are the large majority.

Sykes-Picot (1916). The secret British-French deal to divide the Ottoman Arab lands; shorthand for borders imposed from outside.

Tanzimat. The 19th-century Ottoman modernising reforms.

Two-state solution. The proposal to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict with two states side by side.

Zaydis. A branch of Shia Islam dominant in northern Yemen; the base of the Houthi movement.

Zionism. The modern movement, from the late 1800s, for a Jewish national home in the land of historic Israel.

Last, a short guide to talking about all of this with the people whose history it is. 👉

How to talk about this, and listen

You said you want to understand this history well enough to talk with people from the region. That is a generous goal, and a few habits will serve you better than any single fact. This chapter is the practical payoff of the whole book.

The mindset that works

Lead with curiosity, not conclusions. The single most useful move is to ask and listen rather than to arrive with a verdict. People can tell the difference instantly, and openness is met with openness.

Separate the state from the person. A government, an army, or an armed group is not the same as the people who live under it or near it. Criticising a policy is fine; assuming someone endorses their government, or is responsible for it, is not.

Resist picking a team. On the hardest conflicts, especially Israel and Palestine, the wise instinct is to hold two painful truths at once rather than to score points. You do not have to "solve" the conflict in a conversation, and trying to usually goes badly.

Let people define themselves. Do not assume someone's religion, politics, or origin from their nationality or appearance. The region is far more diverse than outsiders expect, as the faiths chapter shows.

Quick sensitivities to know

These are not rules, just things that help you avoid accidental offence.

Phrases and questions that open doors

Good openers are about culture, history, family, and food, not about taking sides:

• "What is your family's hometown like? What is it known for?"
• "What dish should I absolutely try, and who makes it best?" (Expect strong, joyful opinions.)
• "What do you wish people outside understood about your country?"
• "What is something beautiful about your culture that does not make the news?"

And a few habits to avoid:

• Opening with the conflict, or with "So what do you think about [hot political topic]?"
• Repeating a single news frame as if it were the whole story.
• Lumping very different countries together ("the Arab world" as one thing, or treating Turkey, Iran, and the Arab states as interchangeable).
• Correcting someone about their own lived experience.

If a hard topic comes up

It often will, and that is fine. A few moves keep it respectful:

• Acknowledge feeling before arguing fact. "That sounds incredibly painful" costs nothing and changes the temperature.
• Ask how they came to see it that way. People share more, and you learn more, than in any debate.
• Be honest about your limits. "I am still learning this, I am probably missing a lot" is disarming and true.
• It is okay to disagree quietly. You do not have to endorse a view to respect the person holding it, and you do not have to win.

The big picture to carry with you

If you remember only a handful of things from this book, make it these:

1. These are ancient lands and young countries; most borders were drawn by outsiders a century ago (essential background).
2. Almost everywhere here was Ottoman for four centuries, and the empire's collapse shaped the modern map (Ottomans).
3. Religion is community and identity here, not only private belief (faiths).
4. Most conflicts are several things at once, local, sectarian, and proxy wars between bigger powers (geopolitics).
5. The people are not their headlines. Diversity, hospitality, food, and a deep intellectual heritage are as real as the wars.

Go gently, stay curious, and eat whatever you are offered. For sources and where to read more, see the references. 👉

Sources and further reading

This book is an introductory synthesis, not original research. It draws on the mainstream historical consensus and aims to represent honestly held opposing views, especially on contested topics. The best way to go deeper, and to check this book, is to read widely and to pair sources that come from different perspectives.

A note on balance. On the most disputed subjects, deliberately read more than one side. For the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in particular, reading a Palestinian historian and an Israeli historian together will teach you more than either alone. For current events, rely on up-to-date reporting from several outlets, since the situation keeps changing.

General histories of the region

• Albert Hourani, A History of the Arab Peoples. A classic single-volume survey.
• Eugene Rogan, The Arabs: A History. Readable modern history of the Arab world.
• William L. Cleveland and Martin Bunton, A History of the Modern Middle East. A standard, balanced university textbook.
• Tim Mackintosh-Smith, Arabs: A 3,000-Year History. Sweeping and vivid on language, identity, and culture.

The Ottomans and Turkey

• Caroline Finkel, Osman's Dream: The History of the Ottoman Empire.
• Eugene Rogan, The Fall of the Ottomans. The empire's end in World War I.
• On the Armenian Genocide, read works by historians such as Ronald Grigor Suny ("They Can Live in the Desert but Nowhere Else"); note that Turkish official histories contest the framing, and reading across that divide shows why it is so charged.

The Levant, Lebanon, and Syria

• Kamal Salibi, A House of Many Mansions: The History of Lebanon Reconsidered.
• Robert Fisk, Pity the Nation. A journalist's account of the Lebanese Civil War.
• Patrick Seale, Asad of Syria. On Hafez al-Assad's rule.
• For the Syrian war, look for recent works by scholars and journalists who covered it, and check current reporting for the post-2024 transition.

Israel and Palestine (read in pairs)

• Rashid Khalidi, The Hundred Years' War on Palestine. A leading Palestinian historian's account.
• Benny Morris, Righteous Victims and 1948. An Israeli historian known for documenting the 1948 displacement while writing from an Israeli standpoint.
• Martin Gilbert, Israel: A History. A sympathetic narrative history of Israel.
• Reading Khalidi and Morris together is a good way to see both the shared facts and the genuine disagreements.

Arabia and Yemen

• Works on Saudi Arabia by scholars such as Madawi al-Rasheed (A History of Saudi Arabia) and analyses of Wahhabism and the modern state.
• Tim Mackintosh-Smith, Yemen: The Unknown Arabia. A travel-rich introduction.
• For the current Yemen war, rely on UN reports and humanitarian agencies for the scale of the crisis, and recent journalism for the politics.

On the "national IQ" debate

• On the Flynn effect (the global rise in measured IQ that shows scores track environment), see the work of James Flynn.
• The national-IQ datasets associated with Richard Lynn have been widely criticised for poor sampling and methodology; look for critical reviews in psychology and statistics literature rather than taking the rankings at face value. The education and IQ chapter summarises why.

Quick reference and current events

• Encyclopaedia Britannica and reputable encyclopedias for dates and overviews.
• BBC country profiles for concise, regularly updated summaries of each country.
• For live developments (the Gaza war, Syria's transition, and more), consult current reporting from multiple international outlets, since this book's most recent sections are a snapshot as of early 2026.

This book is a starting point. The region rewards curiosity; keep reading, keep listening, and keep checking more than one source.

Following the news: reputable outlets

For living events, no single outlet has the whole picture. Follow several reputable sources and compare how they cover the same story; the differences are often as revealing as the facts.

International outlets with strong Middle East coverage:

• BBC News (bbc.com)
• Reuters (reuters.com)
• Associated Press (AP)
• The Economist
• The Guardian
• The New York Times
• Financial Times
• Al Jazeera (note it is Qatar-funded)
• The AP and AFP wire services, whose dispatches feed many other outlets.

Regional and country outlets, with honest notes on ownership or press-freedom limits:

• Al Jazeera (Qatar-funded) and Al Arabiya (Saudi-linked); the two often frame regional rivalries differently.
• The Times of Israel, Haaretz, and The Jerusalem Post (Israel, with differing perspectives across the political spectrum).
• Arab News (Saudi-owned).
• The National (UAE-owned).
• L'Orient-Le Jour (Lebanon).
• Middle East Eye.
• The Middle East coverage of Reuters and AP, useful as a wire-service baseline.

Always cross-check. Many regional outlets reflect the viewpoint of a government or owner, and press freedom is limited in much of the region, so a single source can be incomplete or one-sided.

Useful links and references

• Encyclopaedia Britannica (britannica.com) and BBC country profiles (bbc.com) for concise overviews of each country.
• The UN and humanitarian agencies (un.org), including UNHCR, the ICRC, and OCHA, for data on refugees and crises such as Yemen, Syria, and Gaza.
• Reputable think tanks and research bodies for deeper analysis, for example the International Crisis Group, Chatham House, and the Carnegie Middle East Center.
• A reminder: the most recent events in this book are a snapshot as of early 2026, so check current reporting for anything still unfolding.

Per-country reading at a glance

• Each country chapter also has its own "Suggested reading, news, and links" section. For a specific country, start there.