Development Communication: Middle East

Abstract

This entry offers an overview of → development communication in the region that the west calls the Middle East, but which in Arabic is known as “al‐Mashrik al Arabi,” or the Arab East. The area comprises three Arab regions that fall between the eastern Mediterranean, the Arabian (Persian) Gulf, the Red Sea, and the Indian Ocean. Located in an area where Africa, Asia, and Europe meet, these regions are: Egypt, which is in Africa; Bilad ash‐Sham (sometimes referred to as the Fertile Crescent or Greater Syria), on the eastern shores of the Mediterranean Sea, which extends from Turkey and Iran in the north to Egypt in the south and the Arabian peninsula and the Red Sea to the east (including the present states of Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq, and Palestine); and the Arabian peninsula, or Arabian Gulf, which is largely a desert area that includes the present states of Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Oman, Qatar, Bahrain, the Arab Emirates, and Kuwait.