Southwest Asia and North Africa

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Southwest Asia and North Africa
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Introduction

• Rich cultural legacy
• Agricultural revolution
• Urban civilization
• Petroleum industry
• 68 of worlds oil reserves
• OPEC
• Political issues
• Islamic fundamentalism

Aleppo, Syria
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Environmental Geography
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Mostly composed of deserts and uplands

• Deserts Sahara, Libyan, Nubian
• Uplands Arabian Peninsula, Anatolian Plateau,
  Iranian Plateau
• Lowlands Tigris-Euphrates River, Nile River

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Salinization

• How?
• Extensive irrigation arid climates
• Salt accumulation in topsoil
• Lower crop yields, and land abandonment
• Where?
• Iraq, central Iran, Egypt, and irrigated Maghreb

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Water management

• Qanat system
• Tapping into groundwater through tunnel
• Iran ? Arabian Peninsula, and North Africa

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Water management

• Aswan High Dam (1970)
• Benefits
• Year-round cropping
• Hydroelectricity
• Detriments
• Salinization
• Schistosomiasis
• Damages fishing industry near the Nile Delta

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Hydropolitics

• What?
• Interplay of water resource issues and politics
• Where?
• Nile River
• Sudan ?? Egypt
• Tigris-Euphrates River
• Turkey ?? Iraq, Syria
• Jordan River
• Israel, Palestine, Jordan, Syria

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Population and Settlement
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• More than 400 million
• Highest physiological densities
• Tie between water and life
• Population cluster
• North Africa
• The Nile Valley, and Maghreb region
• Southwest Asia
• Highlands, and better-watered shores of the
  Mediterranean

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Rural settlement patterns

• What is the most important indicator of rural
  settlement?

water
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Rural settlement patterns

• Home to early form of agriculture
• 1. Domestication
• 10,000 years ago
• Wheat, barley, cattle, sheep, goats
• 2. Fertile Crescent
• Early agricultural activity (5,000 years ago)
• Lebanon, Syria, northern Iraq, and eastern Turkey

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Rural settlement patterns

• Reflects interrelationship between water and life
• 1. Pastoral nomadism
• In the drier portions of the region, inadequate
  moisture make permanent settlement impossible
• Seasonal movement of livestock from place to
  place
• 2. Oasis settlement
• Tightly clustered permanent settlement

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Rural settlement patterns

• 3. Irrigated agriculture along exotic rivers
• Exotic rivers
• Transport water from distant, more humid lands
  into drier regions
• eg. Nile, Tigris, Euphrates
• Irrigated collective farming
• eg. Kibbutzes
• 4. Dryland agriculture
• Depends on seasonal moisture to support farming
• Practiced on the Mediterranean climate regions

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Urban settlement patterns

• What shaped the urban landscapes?

• Political system

• Religion

• Trades

• Globalization

• Colonialism

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Cities as centers of political authority

• 3500 BC Mesopotamia
• 3000 BC Egypt
• Temples, palaces, tombs, and public buildings

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Cities as trading centers

• 2000 BC the shores of the eastern Mediterranean
• Beirut (Lebanon), Damascus (Syria)
• Port facilities, warehouse districts, and
  commercial thoroughfares

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Cities as religious centers

• Islam (622)
• 8th century Baghdad, Cairo
• Walled urban core (medina), bazaar

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colonialism

• Added another layer of urban landscape features
• Late 19th century North Africa
• Algiers (French), Cairo (British)

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globalization

• Since 1950 added to traditional urban centers
• High-rise apartment houses, and sprawling
  squatter settlements

Cairo, Egypt
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globalization

• Since 1970 oil-rich states of the Persian Gulf
• Modern Western urban design, futuristic
  architecture, and new transportation
  infrastructure

Abu Dhabi, UAE
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Coexistence of old and new
Fes, Morocco
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Migration patterns

• Rural-to-urban shift
• Saudi Arabian 18 (1950) ? 83 (2000)
• Migration within the region
• To oil-rich states such as Saudi Arabia, Kuwait,
  UAE
• Migration between the region
• Job
• Turkish ? Germany
• Algerian, Moroccan ? France

• Political forces
• Lebanese, Iranian ? western Europe, North
  America
• Jewish ? Israel

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Cultural Coherence and Diversity
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Religion

• Which religion has originated in Southwest Asia?

• Judaism (4000 years ago)
• Christianity (2000 years ago)
• Islam (622)

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Geographies of religion

• Judaism

• Christianity
• Outgrowth of Judaism
• Emerged 2000 years ago near Israel

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Geographies of religion

• Islam
• Originated in Makkah (or Mecca) in AD 622
• Follows Quran (or Koran)
• Divided into Shiites and Sunnis
• Diffused to Persia (656), North Africa Iberian
  Peninsula (750), Central/South Asia, and
  Southeast Asia

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Diffusion of Islam
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Modern religions
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Geographies of language

• Afro-Asiatic
• Semitic language
• Arabic
• Hebrew
• Berber language
• Indo-European
• Indo-Iranian language
• Persian
• Kurdish
• Altaic
• Turkish language

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Geopolitical Framework
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Colonial legacy

• When?
• Late arrival because of Turkish Ottoman Empire
• Began after WWI (1918)
• Ended by the 1950s

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Colonial power - France

• Maghreb
• Algeria (1830s)
• Tunisia (1881)
• Morocco (1912)
• After WWI
• Syria (1918)
• Lebanon (1918)

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Colonial power - Great Britain

• British Protectorate before 1900
• Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, UAE, and Aden
• Suez Canal (1869)
• Egypt (1882), Sudan (1896)
• After WWI
• Palestine, Transjordan, Iraq

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• So which countries have NOT been occupied by
  European powers?

• Turkey
• Saudi Arabia

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Decolonization and independence

• North Africa
• Egypt, Sudan, Libya, Tunisia, Morocco (1950s)
• Algeria (1962)
• Southwest Asia
• Iraq (1932), Lebanon (1946), Syria (1946), etc
• while containing the cultural seeds of its later
  trouble

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Arab-Israeli conflict
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Arab-Israeli conflict

• Intifada (1987)
• Demonstration, led by Palestinian, against the
  rule of Israel in Gaza Strip and the West Bank
• Agreements between the PLO and Israel (1990s)
• Potential control of the ruling Palestinian
  Authority (PA) in the Gaza Strip and West Bank

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Islamic fundamentalism

• Khomeni took power in Iran (1979)
• Rule the country by the Islamic law
• Sudan (1989)
• Algeria (1992)
• Egypt, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia

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Conflicts within states

• Lebanon (1975-95)
• Discord among Christian and Muslim communities
• Spillover of Arab-Israeli conflict
• Iraq
• South Shiites
• North Kurds
• Cyprus
• Northern third Islamic Turkish
• South Greek Orthodox

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Conflicts between states

• Western Sahara ?? Morocco (late 1970s)
• Libya ?? Israel, Western Europe, U.S. (1969)
• Sudan ?? Egypt (1995)
• Iran-Iraq war (1980-88)
• Persian Gulf war (1990-91)

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Geopolitical issues

• What is the destablizing force after WWII?

• Creation of Israel

• Rise of Islamic fundamentalism

• Cold war (eg. Libya)

• Ethnic differences (eg. Kurds)

• Political/religious divide (eg. Sudan, Labanon)

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Relations with the U.S.

• Strong allies
• Israel, and Turkey
• Strongly opposed
• Iran, Iraq, Syria, Libya
• Ambiguous relations
• Saudi Arabia

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Economic and Social Development
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The geography of fossil fuels
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The geography of fossil fuels
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The geography of fossil fuels
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Regional economic patterns

• Higher-income oil exporters
• Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain, and UAE
• Lowe-income oil exporters
• Algeria, Libya, Iraq, and Iran
• Prospering without oil
• Israel, Turkey, Tunisia, and Cyprus

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Regional patterns of poverty

• Sudan
• Civil war
• Morocco
• Berber communities
• Brain drain
• Egypt
• Population growth
• Yemen
• Civil unrest

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The role of women

• Is major social issues
• Lowest female labor participation rates
• Large gap between male and female literacy
• But is changing
• Iran
• Libya
• Israel

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Connections with global economy

• Oil economy
• Influences oil price
• Outflow of capital
• Economic integration
• E.U., AFTA, Union of the Arab Maghreb
• Role of Saudi Arabia
• Tourism
• Ancient historical sites significant religious
  localities

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The geography of tourism