I THE ISLAMIC C
OUNTRIES
The chief social characteristics of the Near East in the twentieth century have been the result of the accelerated tempo of modern technological advance. This effort to increase national power and improve living standards began long before the present century in some parts of this area but is only now beginning in others. At first, such changes came about largely through European or American intervention or example; more recently the initiative has been taken by indigenous rulers and governments. The resulting social structure is a web of traditional and new institutions and associations in which the old sometimes provide the foundation for the new, are sometimes simply bypassed and allowed to disappear, or persist significantly alongside the new patterns and even help to shape them.
Physical background
The cultural-geographical area under discussion has been variously called the Near East, the Middle East, southwest Asia, and the Islamic world; these names arose in different times and from different points of view
For our purposes, the Near East comprises the region from Egypt east to Afghanistan and from Turkey south to the Sudan, that is, the following countries: Egypt, Sudan, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, Saudi Arabia and the remainder of the Arabian peninsula, Iraq, Turkey, Iran, and Afghanistan. (Israel, which shares many of the features of this region, is not included in this article.)
Although these countries share a common history and even today preserve a degree of cultural unity, they are far from being socially or geographically homogeneous. They contain a mixture of human physical types and colors—tall and short statures, broad and slender builds, dark and light skins. Their three main languages—Arabic, Persian, and Turkish—belong to different linguistic families. Their economy is largely agricultural, but there are great differences in the extent and importance of industrialization and of pastoralism. Their communities are chiefly rural, but there are, again, great differences in the intensity of urbanization
Income and education are low when compared to industrial regions, yet the range within the Near East is broad. Lebanon and Turkey thus have a per capita annual income of several hundred dollars and a literacy rate of about 50 per cent; there are some sections of the Arabian peninsula that have perhaps a fifth that income and a tenth that literacy rate. In this widely disparate region, the single most common cultural characteristic is religion, for despite even sizable minorities here and there, Islam is the religion of ninetenths of the people in the Near East and is by far the predominant faith in every country except Lebanon, where Christians are almost as numerous as Muslims.
The Near East has a population of 130 million to 140 million and an area of nearly 4 million square miles. Most of this area is steppe and desert. Despite a general proximity to the sea, coastal mountain ranges prevent rainfall from reaching the interior, which remains arid, whereas the coasts receive a large amount of precipitation
Water is derived, in some areas, from the two large river complexes, the Nile and the Tigris-Euphrates. Known mineral resources are inadequate for heavy industry. Oil is abundant, but in vastly differing amounts; it is found mostly in the countries around the Persian Gulf. This uneven distribution of resources has resulted in uneven population density; wide areas are virtually uninhabited, while a small amount of land sustains most village and city life.
Three types of community
The social pattern of tribal, village, and urban communities corresponds to the geographical-economic division of the region.
Nomadic groups
The nomads and seminomads of desert and steppe have been important historically in the spread of Islam; in the development of idealized personal traits, such as bravery, pride, generosity, and cunning; and in certain economic functions, such as stockbreeding and the policing of routes of trade and travel. Their mode of existence has required an adaptation to an environment so severe that few have been able to survive it.
In social organization, nomadic communities (whose wanderings are not random, but regular) have shown considerable reliance upon clan and tribe to carry out the diverse functions that in settled societies are assigned to specialized agencies