This is the essay for the 35th week of the 7th Grade Ron Paul Curriculum. It’s about the Middle East.

The Middle East

 

For almost the whole of the year, we’ve been focusing on Europe and the American colonies. That’s why we will now see the developments in other parts of the world. I will be doing my essay on the Middle East. To clarify the Middle East consists of these modern-day countries.

  • Bahrain
  • Iran
  • Iraq
  • Israel
  • Jordan
  • Kuwait
  • Lebanon
  • Oman
  • Palestine
  • Qatar
  • Saudi Arabia
  • Syria
  • Turkey
  • United Arab Emirates
  • Yemen

Inside the Middle East, there are the Tigris and Euphrates rivers which caused the fertile crescent. It was the birthplace of civilization because the first civilizations were located in the Fertile Crescent. From 1000 BC to 500 Ad the Middle East had been ruled by 4 different major Empires. First was Persia from 550 BC to 330 BC. Then came Alexander the Great’s Empire which lasted a very short time only from 334 BC and after Alexander’s death in 323 BC the empire slowly weakened until it was conquered by the Romans in 168 BC. After Alexander, there was Parthia, which began in 247 BC and ended in 224 AD. Lastly, there is the biggest empire of the 4, the Roman Empire. It started as Ancient Rome which began in 753 BC. Then after that, there was the Roman Republic which started in 509 BC and lastly there was the Roman Empire which began in 27 BC. By 300 AD the Roman Empire began to decline in power and by 500 AD only the Eastern Roman Empire also known as the Byzantine Empire remained. By 700 AD Islam started being the major religion in the Middle East. By this time the only part of the Middle East that was controlled by Europeans were the Crusader States. By 1453 the Byzantine Empire fell and the Ottoman Empire took its place. In 1750 where the school year ended the Middle East was still largely controlled by the Ottomans.

In the Middle East, there are several nice landmarks or Monuments. There was the Ishtar Gate built by Babylon which was the Empire before the Persian Empire. In Jerusalem, there was a Mosque for Muslims the Dome of the Rock and a Church for Christians the Holy Sepulcher in the same city. And in Istanbul the capital of the Byzantine Empire which was known as Constantinople there was the Hagia Sophia which was originally a Church for Christians but was converted into a Mosque when the Ottomans took over.