History of the Middle East brought major protests, uprisings, and revolutions to several Middle Eastern countries, followed by prolonged civil wars in Syria, Iraq, Yemen, and Libya. In 2014, a terrorist group and self-proclaimed caliphate calling itself the Islamic State made rapid territorial gains in western Iraq and eastern Syria, prompting international military intervention. At its peak, the group controlled an area containing an estimated 2.8 to 8 million people, 98% of which was lost by December 2017. By country: General: Works cited History of the Middle East Home to the Cradle of Civilization, the Middle East (usually interchangeable with the Near East) has seen
The Gourd and the Palm-tree work for children. The same poem was later reprinted in Frances Jenkins Olcott's anthology of "Story-Telling Poems" (New York, 1913) with the same claim. Although there is ultimately some justice in this, as we have seen, the poem itself very obviously derives from Meissner's German fable and its original (and unacknowledged) Scottish author, Charles Mackay, nowhere credits it with an Eastern origin in the collection in which it first appeared. The Gourd and the Palm-tree The Gourd and the Palm-tree is a rare fable of West Asian origin that was first recorded in Europe in the Middle Ages. In the