Knowra Near East Near East The Near East is a historically variable region centered on the eastern Mediterranean and western Asia, sometimes including Egypt and parts of southeastern Europe.
Middle East : A modern regional term usually covering western Asia and, in some definitions, Egypt and nearby areas. Often overlaps with the Near East but commonly extends farther east and south.
Orient : A historical European term for eastern lands, especially those of Asia and the eastern Mediterranean. Near East emerged within a vocabulary that divided the world into European-centered regions.
Anatolia : The large peninsula forming most of modern Asian Turkey, bordered by the Black, Aegean, and Mediterranean seas. It is a central western Asian landmass commonly included in the Near East.
Eurocentrism : A perspective that treats Europe and European experience as central standards for interpreting the world. The directional label Near East is defined relative to a European viewpoint.
Eastern Mediterranean : The eastern basin of the Mediterranean Sea and its surrounding coastal lands. Forms the western core of many definitions of the Near East.
Eastern Question : The nineteenth-century diplomatic struggle over the decline of the Ottoman Empire and its territories. European diplomacy helped make the Near East a strategic regional category.
Levant : The eastern Mediterranean lands, commonly including present-day Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Israel, and Palestine. It anchors the region’s eastern Mediterranean core.
Orientalism : A tradition of Western scholarship and representation that constructs the East as an object of knowledge and power. Its critique examines how regional labels can encode unequal perspectives.
Western Asia : The southwestern part of Asia, including the Arabian Peninsula, Anatolia, the Caucasus, and neighboring regions. Provides much of the Near East’s geographic extent beyond the Mediterranean coast.
Ottoman Empire : A state founded in Anatolia that ruled territories across southeastern Europe, western Asia, and North Africa from the late thirteenth century to 1922. Its territories shaped many European understandings of the Near East.
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