16 • 2 The Middle East Before Muhammadand culture had already shifted to the eastern Mediterranean, where it
would last for almost another millennium. It is just where traditional
Western civilization courses leave the Middle East that this concise history
should start.
A MINIMUM OF ANTIQUITYHow admirable are the ways in which human beings adapt to seemingly
adverse conditions: the heat of Libya or the cold of Siberia, the crowds of
Calcutta or the vast emptiness of the Great Plains, the bureaucratized ano¬
nymity of a big university or the insularity of a small college. Note how
people turn adversity into advantage: The Yankee farmer scrabbles a living
out of his rocky hillside, the camel nomad finds seasonal water and vegeta¬
tion in a barren desert, and the architect designs a handsome structure to
fit an oddly shaped city block. We see much adaptability in the history of
the Middle East.
During the last 10,000 years before the birth of Christ, the peoples of
the Middle East developed various skills to cope with their challenging en¬
vironment. They tamed asses and cattle to bear their burdens and share
their labors. They built ovens hot enough to fire clay pottery. As the up¬
lands grew dry and parched, they learned to harness the great rivers in or¬
der to grow more crops. They fashioned tools and weapons of bronze and,
later, of forged iron. They devised alphabets suitable for sending messages
and keeping records on tablets of clay or rolls of papyrus. They developed
cults and rituals, expressing the beliefs that gave meaning to their lives.
They absorbed Medes and Persians coming from the north and various
Semitic peoples from Arabia. They submitted to Alexander's Macedonians
in the fourth century B.C.E. but soon absorbed them into their own cul¬
tures. Finally, in the last century before Christ, the lands east and south of
the Mediterranean were themselves absorbed into the Roman Empire.
PERSIA AND ROMEThe two great empires existing at the dawn of the common era, Persia and
Rome, had taken many pages from the books of their imperial precursors.
During the period of the Achaemenid dynasty (550-330 B.C.E.), Persia, the
land that we now call Iran, had ruled over various ethnic and religious
groups in an area stretching from the Indus to the Nile. The kings and no¬
bles followed the religion of Zoroaster, who had lived in the sixth century