Middle Eastern and North African History

The history of the Middle East and North Africa spans millennia and encompasses the rise and fall of some of the world’s most influential civilisations. In the fourth millennium BCE, Egypt and Mesopotamia developed the earliest urban societies along the Nile and between the Tigris and Euphrates. Empires of Akkad, Babylon and Assyria established administrative, religious and legal systems that shaped the ancient Near East. The Hellenistic conquests of Alexander the Great forged new cultural syntheses, which endured through the Roman and Byzantine periods. In the seventh century CE the emergence of Islam transformed the region’s social and political landscape, with successive Umayyad and Abbasid caliphates overseeing a golden age of science, trade and literature. From the sixteenth century until the early twentieth century the Ottoman Empire exercised overarching power, integrating diverse communities through a patrimonial and religiously plural system. Following the empire’s collapse after the First World War, Western mandates and colonial administrations imposed new boundaries and modern nation-state models. The discovery of vast oil reserves after the Second World War radically altered regional economies and geopolitics, while the rise of nationalism ushered in independent republics, monarchies and military regimes. Cold War rivalries and Arab–Israeli conflicts further reshaped alliances. In the early twenty-first century, the Arab Spring demonstrated popular demands for political reform, economic opportunity and social rights, though outcomes have varied widely. This longue durée narrative underlines the interplay of religion, resource politics, external intervention and internal reform currents that continue to influence stability, identity and development across this pivotal region.

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Middle Eastern and North African History publication trend

The graph below shows the total number of articles in middle eastern and north african history across all publications each year (not limited to Nature Index journals).

Technical terms

Caliphate: A Muslim polity led by a caliph, regarded as the political and religious successor to the Prophet.

Sharīʿa: The body of Islamic law derived from the Qur’an, prophetic tradition and legal scholarship.

Millet system: An Ottoman administrative framework granting religious communities limited self-governance.

Arab Spring: A wave of mass protests and uprisings beginning in 2010, calling for political reform and social justice across the region.

Umayyad and Abbasid: Dynastic caliphates that successively ruled the early Islamic world, overseeing vast territories and cultural flourishing.

References

1. The Special Apparatus (al-Niẓām al-Khāṣṣ): The Rise of Nationalist Militancy in the Ranks of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood. Religions (2022).
2. From Victim to Hangman? Ennahda, Salafism and the Tunisian Transition. Religions (2021).
3. Preaching Politics: How Politicization Undermines Religious Authority in the Middle East. British Journal of Political Science (2022).