Definition of Middle East

Middle is geographically unique, the only place on earth where three continents –Europe, Asia, and Africa – meet and in a historical and cultural sense, converge.

Today, there are many different definitions of the Middle East. Some scholars include the courtiers of northern Africa in their definition of the Middle East.

Others use a cultural definition that includes all the predominantly Islamic countries in Africa and Asia.

The most commonly employed definition of the Middle East is the one that embraces an area fringed by five seas: the Mediterranean, Black, Caspian and the Red seas and the Persian or Arabian Gulf, ‘to include Turkey in the north-west, Iran in the East and Egypt and the northern Sudan in the West’.

A broader definition of the Middle East covers the area from Morocco across Arab North Africa to Afghanistan and Pakistan and from Turkey on the Black Sea southwards through to the Sudan.

Middle East contains the largest oil resources in the world, fully two-thirds of the world’s total reserves. The Middle Eats is driven by serious and long-standing disputes that have led to numerous wars since the end of World War II, including the Gulf War of 1991 and 2003.
Definition of Middle East