16 Interesting Things You Probably Didn’t Know About the Middle East

The Mid­dle East is well known in the west­ern world as the core of reli­gion for its exten­sive­ly rich his­to­ry and food. A lot of Arabs or those who live in this part of the world often for­get. Over­look and mar­gin­al­ize the real­i­ty that this region does not lack nov­el­ty and sur­prise at all. Here is a list of 16 inter­est­ing things you prob­a­bly did­n’t know about the Mid­dle East for empha­siz­ing the ever-stand­ing attrib­ut­es of this region.

1- Real History

Syr­i­ans and Romans were aware of the future per­spec­tive, well before Leif Erik­son set foot on North Amer­i­ca or Neil Arm­strong walked on the moon. In the 2nd cen­tu­ry AD, a sur­viv­ing fan­ta­sy book was writ­ten in Roman Syr­ia that fea­tured the sto­ries of some explor­ers fly­ing to the moon. The dis­cov­ery of a new con­ti­nent over the ocean. First expe­ri­ence with the aliens, and the inter­plan­e­tary war among impe­ri­al­is­tic celes­tial domains. Whether from the dis­cov­ery of can­cer’s first doc­u­ment­ed cas­es on papyrus man­u­scripts that dat­ed back to the era of 3000 BC, 2004–2005 unearthing of world’s ancient per­fume fac­to­ry in Cyprus that was as old as 4000 years to the 2009 find­ing of the first zoo look­ing environment. Dat­ing back to 3500BC in which ele­phants, wild­cats, baboons, and var­i­ous oth­er ani­mals were buried in Egyp­t’s ancient city, Hier­akon­po­lis- the Mid­dle East is sure­ly rich and exten­sive in its true his­to­ry.

2- Kuwait Olympics

Due to the gov­ern­ment leg­is­la­tion, which allows the state to inter­fere in the sport­ing orga­ni­za­tion’s elec­tion, the state of Kuwait was out­lawed from the Olympics. Thus, the Kuwaiti ath­letes take part in the Olympics as inde­pen­dent ath­letes under the flag of the Olympics, not under their own coun­try’s flag.

3- Giant Mushrooms

Amer­i­can sci­en­tists found a 20-foot tall fun­gus in Sau­di Ara­bia in 2007. These big mush­rooms exist­ed and dom­i­nat­ed this coun­try 350 mil­lion years ago until they got extinct. It was most like­ly the biggest liv­ing thing that exist­ed on dry land at that time.

4- Coffee and Mocha

Kal­di, an Ethiopi­an shep­herd, was the first one who found the impact of cof­fee when he observed that after con­sum­ing a spe­cif­ic berry. His herd of sheep became con­sid­er­ably more energetic. From there it was shift­ed to the coun­try of Yemen, where many Sufi Mus­lims, start­ed using it for enhanc­ing their con­cen­tra­tion dur­ing praying. Anoth­er deli­cious drink called Mocha is a mix­ture of cof­fee and choco­late. Its name was orig­i­nal­ly derived from a port locat­ed at the Red Sea in Yemen. Till the year 1990, this port was the main port for export­ing Ara­bi­an cof­fee through­out the world.

5- Burj Khalifa

Dubai was noth­ing but a sleepy pearling city until the dis­cov­ery of oil in 1996. In 1970, the illit­er­a­cy rates were over 70 per­cent in the UAE. Also, it did­n’t have a phone or elec­tric­i­ty lines till 1961. Today, Dubai is the busiest air­port in the world. The Burj Khal­i­fa, named after the Pres­i­dent of the UAE, Khal­i­fa bin Zayed bin Sul­tan Al Nahyan – is the tallest human-made build­ing of the world. Locat­ed in Dubai that makes a fas­ci­nat­ing tourist spot for trav­ellers from all over the world. Anoth­er inter­est­ing thing about the UAE is that there occurs a por­tion of Oman in UAE, and in that por­tion of Oman is a por­tion of UAE.

6- Assassin’s Creed

The renowned Assas­s­in’s Creed game series revolves around a bat­tle among the ‘Assas­sins’ who are fight­ing for free­dom and peace, and the ‘Tem­plars’ who believe that peace will rule only if humankind is controlled. Based on the orig­i­nal order of assas­sins that exist­ed in Syr­ia and Per­sia between the 11th-13th cen­tu­ry. Also known as ‘Hashishiyyin.’

7- FIFA World Cup 2022 in Qatar

The FIFA World Cup for the year 2022 has been sched­uled in Qatar. For this, in the north­ern divi­sion of Ash-Shamal, which has a pop­u­la­tion com­pris­ing less than eight thou­sand peo­ple, one of the sta­di­ums is being con­struct­ed that can accom­mo­date 45330 people. Anoth­er inter­est­ing thing about Qatar is camel rac­ing, which has exclu­sive­ly uti­lized robot jock­eys since the time child jock­eys have been banned.

8- Drying up of Springs

The springs locat­ed in Sau­di Ara­bia are quick­ly dry­ing up due to the coun­try’s three decades of irra­tional farm­ing methods. If this con­tin­ues, the coun­try might become bound to import its entire food items in the future. Anoth­er inter­est­ing thing about this coun­try is that it does not have any rivers.

9- The Treaty of Friendship

Moroc­co had been the first coun­try that rec­og­nized the new­ly estab­lished USA in 1777. The Amer­i­can mer­chant ships faced pirate attacks, by the Bar­bary Coast, at the start­ing of the Amer­i­can Revolution. After failed attempts of get­ting pro­tec­tion from the Euro­pean pow­ers, it was Moroc­co’s Sul­tan Mohammed III who extend­ed pro­tec­tion to Amer­i­can ships by the sul­tanate, con­se­quent­ly ensur­ing a safe pas­sage for them. The rela­tions were made for­mal through the Moroc­can-Amer­i­can Treaty of Friend­ship in 1786, signed by John Adams and Thomas Jefferson.  This Treaty of Friend­ship has been main­tained to be the longest-stand­ing inter­na­tion­al rela­tions treaty in Amer­i­can his­to­ry until today.

10- Sheep Committing Suicide

Sheep attempt mass sui­cide. Its largest not­ed occur­rence was in Turkey, in 2005 in which 1500 sheep fol­lowed one anoth­er over the tip of the cliff. It result­ed in the death of 450 sheep and near­ly 100,000 dol­lar loss­es to the own­er’s families.

11- The suing of NASA

CNN informed in 1997 that 3 Yeme­nis attempt­ed to sue NASA when the space agency invad­ed Mars by send­ing out the Sojourn­er rover and the Pathfind­er space­craft for explor­ing the red planet. They claimed that they had inher­it­ed this plan­et 3000 years ago from their ances­tors before the occur­rence of this incident. They also had doc­u­ments for prov­ing it. How­ev­er, all their claims of own­ing Mars were lat­er discarded.

12- Most alien-looking place on Earth

The Soco­tra Island or The Soco­tra Island of strange plants is a dry, hot island sit­u­at­ed in the Indi­an Ocean. It is a part of Yemen and cre­ates an arch­i­pel­ago com­pris­ing of four islands in the Ara­bi­an Sea. This island is quite iso­lat­ed, still inhab­it­ed by a pop­u­la­tion of 44000 people. Because of its small pop­u­la­tion, it con­sists of 700 rare plants and ani­mal species. 1/3 of the island’s flo­ra and fau­na in total, does­n’t exist any­where else on this plan­et. It has been report­ed as the most alien-look­ing place on Earth.

13- Banning of Alcohol

Alco­hol is for­bid­den in Iran. You can­not find a drop of alco­hol in this coun­try. How­ev­er, beer can appear on the menu of restau­rants, but it is non-alco­holic. Although it may taste sim­i­lar to the real stuff, and there occur many flavours for trying. The vari­ety of shar­bat has tak­en over the ban on alco­hol in Iran.  The list of Per­sian shar­bat is exten­sive in this coun­try, and some of the famous ones are Tokhm-e-Rey­han, Bahar Narenj, Sekan­jabin, and Khak-e-Shir.

14- Sand and Camels Import

We all know that Sau­di Ara­bia is renowned for its camel rid­ing and large desserts, but the coun­try imports sand and camels from Australia. The sand present in the coun­try is not suit­able for con­struc­tion, and Aus­tralian camels are health­i­er and much more delicious.

15- Abandoned Cars

In Dubai, Bank­rupt­cy can­not be filed. Peo­ple, in turn, leave their expen­sive cars in the park­ing lot of the air­port while flee­ing. Almost 2000–3000 cars, which include Porsche, Fer­rari, Mer­cedes, and Land Rover. Are aban­doned every year for gath­er­ing dust in the heat of the desert.

16- Vegetables

With the launch of a new farm­ing sys­tem that requires no soil and that also recy­cles irri­ga­tion water, Qatar, which is a desert state, has made a goal for grow­ing up to 70 per­cent of its veg­eta­bles by the year 2023. The pilot project has turned out to be suc­cess­ful and adapt­ed rea­son­ably well to the coun­try’s harsh grow­ing state.

Last but not least

These are just a few inter­est­ing things about the Mid­dle East.  Over­all, this region of the world is rich in his­to­ry and fea­tures some amaz­ing facts which are worth con­sid­er­ing for their importance.