Tag: middle east

The Middle East is a transcontinental region centered on Western Asia, Turkey , and Egypt . The term has come into wider usage as a replacement of the term Near East beginning in the early 20th century.



Arabs constitute the largest ethnic group in the region by a clear margin. Indigenous minorities of the Middle East include Jews, Baloch, Assyrians, Berbers , Copts, Druze, Lurs, Mandaeans, Samaritans, Shabaks, Tats, and Zazas.European ethnic groups that form a diaspora in the region include Albanians, Bosniaks, Circassians , Crimean Tatars, Greeks, Franco-Levantines, and Italo-Levantines.Among other migrant populations are Chinese, Filipinos, Indians, Indonesians, Pakistanis, Pashtuns, Romani, and sub-Saharan Africans.

The Middle East generally has a hot, arid climate, with several major rivers providing irrigation to support agriculture in limited areas such as the Nile Delta in Egypt, the Tigris and Euphrates watersheds of Mesopotamia, and most of what is known as the Fertile Crescent.