Southwest Asia

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Professor of Assyriology, Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich. Author of Die zweite Zwischenzeit Babyloniens.

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Southwest Asia, subregion of Asia, bounded on the west by the Mediterranean Sea, the Sinai Peninsula, and the Red Sea and on the south and southeast by the Indian Ocean and the Persian Gulf. The region reaches the Caspian Sea and the Black Sea to the north. Southwest Asia is often, but not always, coterminous with the Middle East; the latter is a more variable term that often includes parts of the African continent, while the term “Southwest Asia” is restricted to the continent of Asia.

Southwest Asia, like much of southern Asia, is made up of an ancient platform—the northern fragments of Gondwanaland—in which sloping plains occur in the marginal downwarps. Its principal components are Mesopotamia and the Arabian Peninsula.

Mesopotamia consists of the Tigris and Euphrates floodplains and also the deltas from Baghdad to the Persian Gulf. The original lowland is covered with late Cenozoic sedimentation; the elevated plain, on the other hand, has been dissected by erosion and denudation under the continental conditions prevailing in the late Cenozoic.

Mesopotamia is flat alluvial land. Between Baghdad and the mouth of the Shaṭṭ al-ʿArab (the confluence of the Tigris and Euphrates, where it empties into the Persian Gulf) there is a difference in height of only about 100 feet (30 metres). As a result of the slow flow of the water, there are heavy deposits of silt, and the riverbeds are raised. Consequently, the rivers often overflow their banks (and may even change their course) when they are not protected by high dikes. In recent times they have been regulated above Baghdad by the use of escape channels with overflow reservoirs. The extreme south of the region is extensive with marshes and reed swamps, hawrs, which, probably since early times, have served as an area of refuge for oppressed and displaced peoples.

The supply of water is not regular; as a result of the high average temperatures and a very low annual rainfall, the ground of the plain of latitude 35° N is hard and dry and unsuitable for plant cultivation for at least eight months of the year. Consequently, agriculture without risk of crop failure—which seems to have begun in the higher rainfall zones and in the hilly borders of Mesopotamia in the 10th millennium bce —began in Mesopotamia itself, the real heart of the civilization, only after artificial irrigation had been invented, bringing water to large stretches of territory through a widely branching network of canals. Since the ground is extremely fertile and, with irrigation and the necessary drainage, will produce in abundance, southern Mesopotamia became a land of plenty that could support a considerable population.

The Arabian Peninsula is a tilted platform, highest along the Red Sea, on which the stratified plains have undergone erosion under arid conditions. Plateaus with uplifted margins, Cenozoic lava plateaus, stratified plains, and cuestas (long low ridges with a steep face on one side and a long gentle slope on the other) all occur. Ancient marine sands and alluvium, resulting from previous subsidence and sedimentation, now take the form of vast sandy deserts.

At one time Arabia as a whole may have had greater rainfall and richer vegetation than it does today, as shown by the large dried-up watercourses intersecting the peninsula, but climatic conditions seem to have changed little in the past five millennia, and human life—settled or nomadic—has been a struggle to cope with the harsh realities of this vast peninsula.

Southern Arabia (comprising Yemen and Oman) lies within the climatic zone of the Indian Ocean monsoons, which yield enough rainfall to make it potentially the most fertile part of Arabia. In Yemen, sophisticated irrigation techniques go very far back indeed; soundings in the silt deposits around the great dam of Maʾrib attest intensive agricultural exploitation there from at least 2000 bce .

The geography and climate of Southwest Asia have permitted an unusually long and rich historical record for the region. For more on the history, civilization, and people of Southwest Asia, see history of Mesopotamia; history of Arabia; and Islamic world.