The Middle East (Arabic: الشرق الأوسط, ISO 233: ash-Sharq al-Awsat) is a geopolitical region commonly encompassing Arabia (including the Arabian Peninsula and Bahrain), Asia Minor (Asian part of Turkey except Hatay Province), East Thrace (European part of Turkey), Egypt, Iran, the Levant (including Ash-Shām and Cyprus), Mesopotamia (modern-day Iraq), and the …

The ancient Aramaic alphabet was adapted by Arameans from the Phoenician alphabet and became a distinct script by the 8th century BC. It was used to write the Aramaic languages spoken by ancient Aramean pre-Christian tribes throughout the Fertile Crescent.It was also adopted by other peoples as their own alphabet when empires and their subjects underwent …

Historically and originally, Aramaic was the language of the Arameans, a Semitic-speaking people of the region between the northern Levant and the northern Tigris valley. By around 1000 BC, the Arameans had a string of kingdoms in what is now part of Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, and the fringes of southern Mesopotamia and Anatolia.Aramaic rose to prominence under the Neo …

Christianity, which originated in the Middle East during the 1st century AD, is a significant minority religion within the region, characterized by the diversity of its beliefs and traditions, compared to Christianity in other parts of the Old World.Christians now make up approximately 5% of the Middle Eastern population, down from 20% in the early 20th century.

Persian Jews or Iranian Jews (Persian: یهودیان ایرانی, yahudiān-e-Irāni; Hebrew: יהודים פרסים Yəhūdīm Parsīm) are the descendants of Jews who were historically associated with the Persian Empire, whose successor state is Iran.The biblical books of Esther, Isaiah, Daniel, Ezra, and Nehemiah contain references to the lives and experiences of Jews who lived in Persia.

The varieties (or dialects or vernacular languages) of Arabic, a Semitic language within the Afroasiatic family originating in the Arabian Peninsula, are the linguistic systems that Arabic speakers speak natively. There are considerable variations from region to region, with degrees of mutual intelligibility that are often related to geographical distance and some that are mutually …

Proto-Sinaitic (also referred to as Sinaitic, Proto-Canaanite when found in Canaan, the North Semitic alphabet, or Early Alphabetic) is considered the earliest trace of alphabetic writing and the common ancestor of both the Ancient South Arabian script and the Phoenician alphabet, which led to many modern alphabets including the Greek alphabet. According to common theory, …

Aššur is the name of the city, of the land ruled by the city, and of its tutelary deity from which the natives took their name, as did the entire nation of Assyria which encompassed what is today northern Iraq, north east Syria and south east Turkey. Today the Assyrians are still found throughout the Middle East, particularly in Iraq, Iran, Syria, Turkey, and the Diaspora in the …

Oct 07, 2022 · Aramaic language, Semitic language of the Northern Central, or Northwestern, group that was originally spoken by the ancient Middle Eastern people known as Aramaeans. It was most closely related to Hebrew, Syriac, and Phoenician and was written in a script derived from the Phoenician alphabet. Aramaic is thought to have first appeared among the …

The Semitic languages are a branch of the Afroasiatic language family.They are spoken by more than 330 million people across much of West Asia, the Horn of Africa, and latterly North Africa, Malta, West Africa, and in large immigrant and expatriate communities in North America, Europe, and Australasia.The terminology was first used in the 1780s by members of the Göttingen …