LOCATION & PLACE
This region includes parts of both Africa and Asia.
Answer: What is the Middle East and North Africa?
or
Southwest Asia and North Africa - SWANA
Much of the region has this, which causes hot temperatures and very little rainfall.
Answer: What is a desert climate?
This language is spoken widely across much of the region.
Answer: What is Arabic?
One of the world’s first civilizations developed in this region.
Answer: What is Mesopotamia?
This natural resource has made the region globally important.
Answer: What is oil?
This sea separates North Africa from Southern Europe.
Answer: What is the Mediterranean Sea?
This desert stretches across most of North Africa.
Answer: What is the Sahara Desert?
This religion began in Southwest Asia and spread across North Africa.
Answer: What is Islam?
Ancient Egypt depended on this river to survive.
Answer: What is the Nile River?
Many countries in the region rely heavily on selling oil to other countries.
Answer: What is trade (or exporting oil)?
This man-made waterway dramatically shortened travel between Europe and Asia.
Answer: What is the Suez Canal?
Because of limited rainfall, people in the region have historically depended on these features for farming.
Answer: What are rivers?
This city is considered holy by Muslims, Christians, and Jews.
Answer: What is Jerusalem?
This empire controlled much of the Middle East and North Africa until the early 1900s.
Answer: What is the Ottoman Empire?
This term describes how events in the region affect the rest of the world.
Answer: What is globalization?
This geographic feature makes Turkey both a European and Asian country.
Answer: What is the Bosporus Strait?
These river systems supported one of the world’s earliest civilizations and still cause political tension today.
Answer: What are the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers?
Despite shared language and religion, countries in the region differ greatly in this aspect of identity.
Answer: What is culture (or traditions / customs / national identity)?
After World War I, through this concept, European powers reshaped borders in the region with little local input.
Answer: What is colonialism?
This challenge helps explain why conflicts over land and resources can escalate quickly.
Answer: What is limited natural resources?
Control of this type of geographic feature often gives countries economic and political power in the region.
Answer: What is a chokepoint (strategic strait)?
This environmental challenge connects climate, population growth, and political conflict in the region.
Answer: What is water scarcity?
This idea explains why the Middle East and North Africa are not culturally or politically “one place.”
Answer: What is diversity within the region?
In this region, political power and religious authority were often closely linked, shaping how empires ruled and justified their control.
What is the connection between religion and government?
(Acceptable: “religious legitimacy,” “theocratic rule”)
News coverage often presents this region as a single, conflict-defined place, even though it contains many different countries, cultures, and experiences.
What is stereotyping (or oversimplification)?