Middle East historical timeline

The cradle of civilization

Mesopotamia, the fertile land between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in modern Iraq, is widely considered the birthplace of some of humanity's earliest cities, writing systems, and organized states, stretching back more than 5,000 years. Ancient Persia, centered in modern Iran, built one of history's largest and most influential empires, with Persepolis standing today as one of the ancient world's great architectural achievements. The Levant, meanwhile, saw the rise of Phoenician city-states and, later, was shaped profoundly by successive Egyptian, Assyrian, Babylonian, Persian, Greek, and Roman rule.

The birthplace of three major religions

This region gave rise to Judaism, Christianity, and Islam in turn, each shaping its history, architecture, and culture profoundly. Jerusalem holds sites of central significance to all three faiths, while Mecca and Medina in Saudi Arabia became Islam's two holiest cities following the religion's founding in the 7th century, from which Islamic civilization and the Arabic language spread rapidly across the wider region.

Empires, trade, and the Ottoman era

The region's position between Europe, Asia, and Africa made it a continuous crossroads of trade and empire — from the Silk Road's western terminus to centuries of Ottoman rule (centered in modern Turkey) that, at its height, spanned much of this entire grouping, leaving lasting architectural, culinary, and cultural influence still visible from Istanbul to the Levant and beyond.

The 20th century and modern transformation

European colonial and mandate powers reshaped the region's borders following the Ottoman Empire's collapse after the First World War, with independence for most of today's countries following through the mid-20th century. The discovery of oil transformed the Gulf states' economies and infrastructure within a matter of decades, while other parts of the region — Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, and Iraq specifically — experienced serious and sometimes prolonged conflict in the decades since. Today the region remains one of the world's most dynamic and, in places, most complex to navigate as a traveler, spanning everything from some of the world's newest ultra-modern cities to sites of millennia-old continuous human history.