Significant Terms
A state and caliphate that controlled much of Southeast Europe, Western Asia and North Africa between the 14th and early 20th centuries.
What is the Ottoman Empire?
A cooperative settlement of small individual farms in Israel.
What is a moshav?
Belief in one God.
What is monotheism?
Person believed to be a messenger from God.
What is a prophet?
This term describes a series of protest and revolutions that began to spread across the Arab world in late 2010.
What is the Arab Spring?
A communal farm or settlement in Israel.
What is a kibbutz?
What is Christianity?
A range of hills in the Middle East, possession of which is disputed between Israel and Syria: under Syrian control until 1967 when they were stormed by Israeli forces; Jewish settlements have since been established.
What is Golan Heights?
The law of God as revealed to Moses and recorded in the first five books of the Hebrew scriptures.
What is the Torah?
A valley formed by the separation of tectonic plates.
What is a rift valley?
in Islam, a house of worship.
What is a mosque?
A river of southwest Asia rising in Syria and Lebanon and flowing about 360 km (225 mi) south through the Sea of Galilee to the northern end of the Dead Sea.
What is the Jordan River?
The terrorist paramilitary group dedicated to destroying Israel.
What is Hezbollah?
An area claimed from 1949 to 1988 as part of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan but occupied from 1967 by Israel. The territory, excluding East Jerusalem, is also known within Israel by its biblical names, Judea and Samaria.
What is the West Bank?
An historical geographical term referring to a large area in the Eastern Mediterranean region of Western Asia. In its narrowest sense, it is equivalent to the historical region of Syria, which included present-day Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Israel and Palestine.
What is the Levant?
A salt lake between Israel and Jordan: the lowest lake in the world. 46 miles long; 10 miles wide; 1293 feet below sea level.
What is the Dead Sea?
Proclamation that promised British support of the establishment of the state of Israel.
What is the Balfour Declaration?
A river in SW Asia, flowing from E Turkey through Syria and Iraq, joining the Tigris to form the Shatt-al-Arab near the Persian Gulf.
What is the Euphrates River?
A religion developed among the ancient Hebrews and characterized by belief in one transcendent God who has revealed himself to Abraham, Moses, and the Hebrew prophets and by a religious life in accordance with Scriptures and rabbinic traditions.
What is Judaism?
An ethnic group without a formal country.
What is a stateless nation?