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The Middle East, as a geographical term, is generally used today to cover the area stretching from Morocco through Afghanistan, and is roughly equivalent to the area of the first wave of Muslim conquests plus Anatolia. It is a predominantly Muslim area with widespread semi-arid and desert conditions where agriculture is heavily dependent on irrigation and pastoral nomadism has been prevalent. With the twentieth-century rise of exclusive linguistic nationalisms, which have taken over many of the emotional overtones formerly concentrated on religious loyalties, it becomes increasingly doubtful that the Middle East is now much more than a geographical expression – covering an area whose inhabitants respond to very different loyalties and values. In Turkey since the days of Atatürk, the ruling and educated élites have gone out of their way to express their identification with Europe and the West and to turn their backs on their traditional Islamic heritage. A glorification of the 'modern' and populist elements in the ancient Turkish and Ottoman past has gone along with a downgrading of Arab and Persian cultural influences–indeed the latter are often seen as having corrupted the pure Turkish essence, which only re-emerged with Atatürk's swepping cultural reforms. Similarly the Iranians are increasingly emulating the technocratic and rationalizing values of the capitalist West, and in the cultural sphere identify with the glorious civilization of pre-Islamic Iran. This identification goes along with a downgrading of Islam and particularly of the Arabs, which has characterized both radical nationalists like the late nineteenth-century Mîrzâ Âqâ Khân Kirmânî and the twentieth-century Ahmad Kasravâ1 and more conservative official nationalists such as the Pahlavi Shahs and their followers. The recent celebrations of the 2500th anniversary of the Persian monarchy, for example, were notable for their virtual exclusion of the Muslim ulama, though religious leaders of other religious were invited, and their lack of specifically Islamic references. In both Iran and Turkey, traditional Islam has become largely a class phenomenon, with the traditional religion followed by a majority of the peasantry and the petty bourgeoisie, but rejected or radically modified by the more educated classes. With the continued spread of Western-style secular education it may be expected that the numbers of people identifying with nationalism and with the West (or with the Communist rather than the Islamic East) will grow.

"This new edition examines how development in the Middle East is being influenced by global economic change. This comparative textbook focuses on the region's strengths, and highlights development success, especially in the Gulf, Turkey and Israel. The major structural changes in the economies of the Middle East are analysed and current employment challenges discussed. The impact of demographic changes is considered, notably the dramatic decline in birth rates which will have implications for future employment. The contribution of banks and capital markets to the region's development is appraised, including that of Islamic financial institutions which play a prominent role in the GCC countries but are on the margins of the financial systems elsewhere. Historically development in the GCC was linked to oil and gas production and prices, a key issue being whether these are being decoupled as economies diversify and become more self-sustaining. The evidence on this from the GCC is encouraging, with transparent and accountable financial management and major improvements in economic governance despite the lack of democracy. Examining the drivers of economic development in the Middle East in a regional and global context, this fully updated textbook is a key resource for students and academics, interested in economic development and the political economy of the Middle East."

The well-informed, frequently puzzled by foreign affairs, are sometimes even mystified by problems of the Middle East, an area of unusual volatility, controversy, and seeming unpredictability. Yet that area need not be less knowable than other regions. Actually, the Middle East may well prove to be more intelligible and predictable than most regions.There are, I admit, some genuinely puzzling s pects to the Middle East—one is the military ascendancy of a small and reputedly unmarital people over vast masses of war like people. But after several decades of unremitting hostility to Jewish political assertiveness in the Middle East, it is surely a suspension of rationality to suppose—as most of us seem to—that the atmosphere can be cleared by some semantic formulation.