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GEA 3635

Complete Study Guide for the First Exam  (Final Update:1/29/13)

Note: Don’t forget to study the physical features map lists

 

 

What is Geography? What is the Middle East?

  1. What is geography?   What does it mean to think spatially (3 ways)?
  2. What are the two main divisions of Geography?
  3. Name and describe what happens in the three major areas of research in Middle East Geography?
  4. What is the major media discourse on the Middle East often about/like?  What is the common thread among Clash of Civilizations, Lexus and the Olive Tree, and Jihad vs. McWorld. Alternatively, what topics do social scientists working on the Middle East focus on?  What are some topics scholars from the Middle East focus on?
  5. Despite the hype, what are some attributes that made and make the Middle East an important region of the world? What often goes unmentioned?
  6. According the lecture, what is more important than trying to delimit the true extent of the region?
  7. How did the term Middle East arise?   What is the Orient, and who were the Orientalists?   What are the Arabic words for Western and Eastern portions of the Arabic world?

 

All You Ever Wanted to Know About Sand

  1. Why is physical geography important in the Middle East and name four things it has strongly influenced?
  2. What is plate tectonics and what are the plates that affect the Middle East?
  3. What are the three major landform provinces in the Middle East proper and how are they different from each other?
  4. What does Rub al Khali translate as?  Where is it?  What is the Sahara?
  5. How was the Red Sea created?
  6. How was the Gulf created?  What is the difference between the Arabian side and Iranian side?  What causes it to be polluted?
  7. What is the significance of the Mediterranean Sea for people living around it?
  8. What is the importance of straits and canals (especially the Bosporus and Dardanelles and the Suez Canal)
  9. What is the difference between the terrain/climate where rivers start and where they travel through in the Middle East/North Africa?  How is the seasonal flow of the Nile different from other rivers?
  10. What is the Shatt Al Arab?  What type of unique culture used to be there?
  11. What is the Aswan Dam and what has been its impact on Egyptian agriculture?
  12.  What is special about the Dead Sea?
  13. What is an aquifer, what are the two types and what is the difference between them?  What is desalinization?
  14. What latitude is the boundary between dry and humid in the region?
  15. What are the major factors that influence climate?  Specifically why are land water relationships and landforms important?
  16. What is the Sirocco?  Shamal?
  17. What are the three major climate regions in the Middle East/NA (hint: one is Mediterranean), and what characterizes those climates
  18. What can you grow in Steppe Soil?   Mediterranean?  What is Alluvial Soil and what is good about it?

 

Who Rulezz: Empires in the Middle East

  1. What is a palimpsest? Why does Held say it is like the Middle East? Is the Middle East the only place like a palimpsest? What are the six types features of the palimpsest I mentioned in the lecture (via Held), what are some examples of each and why are they significant?
  2. What made Mesopotamia attractive to hunter/gathers? And later, what was there that made it a reasonable place to start of agriculture, and thus organized societies?
  3. What is the Neolithic Revolution? What comes along with the crops?
  4. Who were the Sumerians, where did they settle, and what did they do first (besides the wheel)?
  5. What city was the first to reach 200,000 persons, and was home to the Babylonians? (come on, this one is sooooo easy)
  6. What are three factors that helped allow for the long run ancient Egyptian civilization had?
  7. Where did the Persian/Archaemenid empire come from and where did it establish itself? How far did it stretch (see maps in book)?
  8. What does Alexander the Great have to do with the region? What was Seleucid Empire? What was Ptolemaic Egypt and what was it famous for?
  9. What was the first Jewish Diaspora (see next lecture as well)? The second?
  10. Who were the Phoenicians? What was Carthage and who did it fight?
  11. What part of the area we are studying were the Romans more active? Was Rome a European or Mediterranean Empire? Who were the Byzantines?
  12. Who were the Sassians?
  13. What were the Muslim armies “armed” with as they ventured out in 633? How far did they go in their first 100 years (see maps in Held as well)? Why did they take Mesopotamia so quickly? What were the capitals in 661? 750? Name the Empire associated with each capital.
  14. Who were the Seljuks? Who were the Crusaders? What was the Crusades impact on the Middle East? On Europe?
  15. Who were the Moors and where was their Spanish capital?
  16. Who were the Ottomans? Who did they finally defeat? Where did they control?
  17. What were the four major power cores in the Middle East proper? What is the one in North Africa? What was never taken from the outside and why? Did anyone ever hold the whole region at once?

 

 

Many groups of people

  1. What are the big patterns about where people are located in the region?
  2. Have populations increased rapidly since the 1950’s? What countries in the region have over 65 million people?
  3. Why are censuses in the region often not completely accurate?
  4. What percentage of Muslims live in the broader region? What is the largest Islamic country?
  5. What are Held’s six factors that influence population size?
  6. Are countries like Egypt equally dense throughout their territory?
  7. When do populations take off? Why does the death rate decline? What helps the birth rate decrease?
  8. What are the three types of migration? What are the major international migrations that have been associated with the region over the last few decades?
  9. What are some Semitic languages in the region? Turkish? Indo-European?
  10. What are the three styles of Arabic? Are there also dialects?
  11. What is Yiddish? What is Hebrew and why was it revived in the 19th century?
  12. What part of the broader region are Berber languages spoken?
  13. What is the language that is likely connected most strongly to ancient Egyptian?
  14. Where did Turkish language originate? What happened in the early 20th century to how Turkish was written?
  15. What type of script does Farsi use? Where is it spoken? Where is Kurdish spoken?
  16. What about Islam allowed such linguistic and religious diversity to persist in the region and what does this have to do with dhimmi? What was the term for this when it was institutionalized in the form of religious courts under the Ottomans?
  17. What do Arabs have in common? Is there much diversity within the category “Arab”?
  18. Where are Maronites, Druze and Alawis centered/located?
  19. Are Berbers a single group of people speaking a single language? What threatened Berber languages after independence? Are their fates improving recently?
  20. Where have Turks migrated to in Europe in largest numbers?
  21. What branch of Islam do Persians follow? Azeris? Kurds?
  22. Where did Jews go during the first Diaspora? Second Diaspora?
  23. What happened to the Armenians from 1915-1917?

 

Regional Religion

  1. What do Islam and Muslim mean in Arabic?
  2. Who was the founder of Islam? What other religions’ prophets is he considered the “seal” of?
  3. What are the hadith and sunnah?
  4. What two things was Mecca known for at the time of the prior to the founding of Islam that made it a trading post?
  5. Why did Muhammad run into trouble w/ the Meccan authorities? What is the hijrah? Where did the early Muslims go to?
  6. What year in the Gregorian calendar is year one in the Islamic calendar? Why are years in the Islamic calendar shorter?
  7. What is the Quran and why was it not translated from Arabic for a long time?
  8. Why do mosques have minarets? How far apart are they spaced? What is a mihrab?
  9. What are the five pillars of Islam (know what each involves, not Arabic names)? Why did these help make Islam appealing?
  10. What is Sharia? Salafism? Caliph? Umma? Mahdi?
  11. What is the different perspective on succession between Sunni and Shi’i Islam? Which branch of Islam is larger? What is an Imam? Ayatollah?
  12. What is the significance of Najaf to Shi’i? Karbala? Samarra? Qom?
  13. What sect of Shi’i is the largest? Where are its followers? What causes divisions between the various Shi’a sects?
  14. Who are the Druze? The Alawis? The Ibadhis?
  15. What aspect of Islam is pursued by Sufis? How do they pursue this?
  16. Where did the early Christians go after being encouraged to leave Judea? In what century did Christianity become the established religion of Rome? What are the Christian groups in the Egypt? Lebanon?
  17. What are the four major branches of Judaism? Which is most conservative?
  18. What is Yazidism? Zoroastrianism? Bahaism?

 

Making the Map

  1. Were boundaries in the region firm before European involvement? Why did they not matter in the past? What resource made them matter more? Were states created to be harmonious?
  2. Why was the long Ottoman decline overstated? What were some reasons stagnation did occur?
  3. What was Tanzimet, and what were some changes it brought?
  4. When did the Ottomans finally lose their territory? What state were the Turks left with and what person led them after WWI?
  5. Who were the Hashemites? What was their reward for leading the Arab revolt during WWI?
  6. Who were Ibn Saud and Muhammad Ibn Abd Wahhab? What region of Saudi Arabia did they come from? What is the unified kingdom of Nejd, Hijaz and al-Hasa now called?
  7. What is a sheikh? An emir?
  8. What did Kuwait have that helped in trade? Who did they, like other Gulf sheikdoms, align with? What is the ruling family name?
  9. What sect of Islam are the Bahrain rulers? What sect is most of the population? Does Qatar have a lush environment?
  10. What did the UAE used to be known as? How did the British divide the emirates up? Which Emirate is the biggest and has the most oil?
  11. What are the two areas of power in Oman? Where was Oman’s empire?
  12. What is the major sect and city in northern Yemen? Southern Yemen? Who fought the North Yemen civil war? Was North or South socialist? Is Yemen tribal?
  13. Who were the Pahlavis? Who was Mossadegh and what happened to him? Who did the Shah align with?
  14. Who was Gamal Nasser, what did he do to gain prestige, what superpower did he align with initially and what did he have to do with Pan Arabism? What is Pan-Arabism?
  15. What was the United Arab Republic? What is the Ba’ath Party? What did Sadat do?
  16. What is the Arab League?
  17. What groups were added to Lebanon by the French to weaken Syria? How did the constitution suggest power sharing? Did this contribute to the Lebanese Civil War? When was the war?
  18. What is the Barbary Coast? What are departments and what did that have to do with Algeria? What happened to the best land under the French? What did you have to do to become a French citizen?
  19. What was the FLN? What were colons?
  20. What caused the Algerian Civil War?
  21. What is the name of the ruling dynasty in Morocco? What two countries split Moroccan territory during colonialism? What happened to the Spanish Sahara?
  22. Who is Gaddafi? The Neo-Destour party?
  23. What is the difference between Sudan, South Sudan and Darfur?
  24. What are the two types of Cypriots? What happened in 1974 in terms of an attempted coup, invasion, partition and migration? How have the two sides fared?
  25. What global flows did the lecture on making the map show the region to be involved in? Who tended to carry out liberalization efforts in the region and what did it do to Islam?

 

Cities! Villages!

  1. Until 20th century, was the region mostly urban or village based? Did it have cities at all? What was the world’s largest city in 1000? What are currently the three largest cities in the Middle East proper?
  2. What are three characteristics many villages in the region have in common?
  3. What is a qanat and why is it efficient at its job?
  4. What are some reasons for the crooked street pattern in the region? What problems does it cause today?
  5. What is the adjective Held uses to describe houses in the region? What does he mean by that?
  6. What is male space inside a traditional Islamic house? Female space? What does lattice work allow?
  7. What is a wind tower, and how does it work? What is a Sirdab? What is an alternative to keep cool at night?
  8. What are the six features of an Islamic city?
  9. What is a Masjid al Jami? Madrassah? Who builds many throughout the world today?
  10. What are suqs? How are they arranged (both from center out, and by type)?
  11. What is the importance of quarters in regional cities? What are some new types of quarters that emerged in 20th century?