5.2 Southwest Asia and North Africa: Cities, Crowds, and the People Who Make the Region

 

Section 2: Cities, Crowds, and the People Who Make the Region

Learning Objectives

By the end of this section, students should be able to:

1. Explain how agricultural surpluses helped produce some of the world’s earliest cities.
2. Describe the historical layers found in cities across Southwest Asia and North Africa.
3. Interpret the region’s contemporary patterns of urbanization and international migration.
4. Compare the different paths taken by countries affected by the Arab Spring and later protest movements.

The Original Group Project

The first city was not a skyline. It was a promise—and a plumbing problem.

Thousands of people agreed, usually without ever holding a meeting about it, to remain in roughly the same place. They would depend upon one another for food, protection, trade, worship, waste removal, and the enforcement of rules. Some would grow grain. Others would make pottery, record debts, organize armies, repair canals, interpret the wishes of the gods, or announce that taxes were due—which may have been civilization’s first truly unpopular profession.

Among the earliest cities appeared in the valleys of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. By roughly 4000 BCE, settlements such as Uruk were developing into cities with walls, temples, workshops, administrative systems, and thousands of residents. Similar urban experiments arose along the Nile and, independently, in other parts of the world.

Agriculture did not automatically create cities. It made cities possible by producing enough food to support people who were not themselves farmers. Once grain could be stored, societies could feed artisans, priests, soldiers, merchants, builders, and officials. Storage also encouraged accounting. Accounting encouraged writing. Writing encouraged administration. Administration eventually produced filing systems, and humanity has been looking for lost paperwork ever since.

Jared Diamond argues that the Fertile Crescent had an unusually favorable collection of domesticable plants and animals. That geographical advantage helped some communities produce food surpluses relatively early. In this section, however, the important link is brief: greater and more reliable production allowed populations to become denser, labor to become more specialized, and institutions to become more elaborate. Geography may have loaded the dice, but people still played the game. Wheat did not invent taxation, and goats did not order anyone to build a city wall.

City-States: Civilization With Neighbors

Early Mesopotamia was not a single country. It was a landscape of competing city-states—cities such as Ur, Uruk, Eridu, Lagash, and Babylon that controlled surrounding agricultural territory, or a hinterland.

The relationship between city and countryside was fundamental. A city could not eat its temples, walls, or legal codes. It depended upon farmers outside the urban center to produce grain, livestock, fiber, and other necessities. In return, the city might provide markets, protection, religious institutions, manufactured goods, or irrigation systems. It might also demand taxes, labor, and military service. Civilization was a bargain, though not always an evenly negotiated one.

Early cities became centers of extraordinary invention. They concentrated skilled workers, accumulated knowledge, and connected people through trade. But they also concentrated inequality, disease, garbage, political power, and opportunities for one group to tell another group what to do.

Religious and political leaders often occupied the top of the social hierarchy. Artisans, merchants, farmers, laborers, enslaved people, and other groups occupied different positions beneath them. Walls could protect residents from attackers, but they also identified who belonged inside and who did not. The city was both a machine for cooperation and a method of organizing inequality.

That tension has never disappeared. Modern cities still generate wealth and creativity while distributing their benefits unevenly. The skyscraper and the informal settlement are not always separate stories. Frequently, they are two outcomes of the same urban economy.

Cities Outlive Their Conquerors

The urban history of Southwest Asia and North Africa did not end with Sumer. Akkadian, Babylonian, Assyrian, Egyptian, Phoenician, Persian, Greek, Roman, Byzantine, Arab, Berber, Ottoman, and European powers all built, conquered, expanded, renamed, and reorganized cities across the region.

Carthage, on the coast of present-day Tunisia, began as a Phoenician settlement and became the center of a formidable Mediterranean empire. After Rome destroyed Carthage in 146 BCE, the Romans rebuilt it. Roman Carthage included baths supplied by an aqueduct extending more than 80 miles from inland springs.

A public bath may sound like a luxury, but it reveals an entire geography of power. Water had to be captured, transported, protected, and distributed. Fuel had to be gathered to heat it. Workers had to construct and maintain the complex. Landscapes far beyond the city were reorganized so urban residents could enjoy the benefits. The bath was local; its ecological footprint was regional.

Cities preserve these layers. A street may follow a Roman route, pass through an Islamic-era gate, cross a French colonial boulevard, and end beside a twenty-first-century office tower. The past does not sit politely underneath the present. It keeps poking through.

The “Islamic City”: Useful Pattern, Dangerous Shortcut

Beginning in the seventh century, Islam spread from the Arabian Peninsula across Southwest Asia, North Africa, and beyond. Its religious institutions, commercial practices, legal traditions, and cultural life became deeply woven into many cities.

A historic urban core is often called a medina. Many medinas contain a central mosque, markets or suqs, public baths, workshops, courtyards, narrow streets, and closely built homes. Courtyard houses can provide shade and privacy. Narrow streets reduce direct sunlight and create more comfortable walking conditions in hot climates. Markets cluster merchants and customers together, transforming shopping into a social activity rather than a lonely expedition through a parking lot.

Yet geographer Janet Abu-Lughod warned that the phrase Islamic city can become misleading when it is treated as a universal blueprint. Casablanca, Cairo, Damascus, Istanbul, Jerusalem, Marrakesh, Mecca, Muscat, Tehran, and Tunis do not all have the same history or urban form. Religion matters, but so do climate, water, trade, topography, political power, social class, local customs, transportation, and empire.

The better approach is to look for recurring features without pretending every city was stamped from the same mold.

Tunis offers a particularly clear example. Its medina contains mosques, residences, markets, and winding lanes shaped by centuries of urban life. Surrounding it are boulevards and administrative districts developed during the period of French control. Beyond those are apartment blocks, highways, office towers, suburbs, and newer commercial developments. Tunis is neither an “ancient Islamic city” nor a “modern Western city.” It is both, neither, and more—a layered urban landscape in which several histories remain visible at once.

Urban Life Today

Southwest Asia and North Africa is now highly urbanized, but the pattern is extremely uneven. The Gulf states contain some of the world’s most urban populations. Egypt contains one of the world’s largest metropolitan areas in Cairo, but its national population remains packed primarily along the Nile Valley and Delta. North African populations cluster along Mediterranean and Atlantic coasts. In Iraq, settlement follows the Tigris and Euphrates. Large interiors remain sparsely populated because water is scarce.

The map can therefore be misleading. Egypt is a large country by area, but most Egyptians occupy a remarkably narrow inhabited corridor. Saudi Arabia covers most of the Arabian Peninsula, yet much of its population is concentrated in several metropolitan and coastal zones. A country may appear enormous in an atlas while most daily life occurs within a small portion of it.

Cities attract people because they concentrate universities, hospitals, government offices, transportation, cultural institutions, and employment. They also concentrate high rents, traffic, unequal services, and the sinking suspicion that everyone else has somehow found a better apartment.

Many cities in the region are young. Their populations include enormous numbers of students, recent graduates, migrants, and people searching for employment. That can produce creativity and political energy, but it also creates pressure when housing is expensive, public services are uneven, and employment does not keep pace with education.

The city becomes a place of possibility—and a pressure cooker.

Who Actually Lives Here?

A political map presents each country as a neatly bounded container. Population data quickly complicate that picture.

The Gulf states, in particular, depend heavily upon international workers. In Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, foreign-born residents greatly outnumber people born in the country. Kuwait also has a foreign-born majority, while Bahrain, Oman, and Saudi Arabia contain very large migrant communities. These residents build infrastructure, staff hospitals, maintain cities, operate businesses, perform domestic work, and support nearly every sector of the economy.

The table uses foreign-born residents, the standard United Nations concept of international migrant stock. It means people currently living in a country other than the country in which they were born. Country-born residents are calculated by subtracting the foreign-born population from the total.

These categories are not the same as citizen and noncitizen, immigrant and refugee, Arab and non-Arab, or legal and undocumented. A child of immigrants born in the host country is country-born under this measure. Conversely, a citizen born abroad may be counted as foreign-born. Palestinian refugee populations are especially difficult to represent because many refugees and their descendants were born in their present country of residence.

Population and Place of Birth in Southwest Asia and North Africa

Approximate 2024 estimates, in millions. Totals are rounded, so columns may not add perfectly.

Country or territory	Total population	Foreign-born residents	Country-born residents	Foreign-born share
Algeria	46.8	0.25	46.55	0.5%
Bahrain	1.6	0.86	0.74	53%
Egypt	116.5	0.95	115.55	0.8%
Iran	91.6	3.8	87.8	4.1%
Iraq	46.0	0.37	45.63	0.8%
Israel	9.4	2.0	7.4	21%
Jordan	11.5	3.3	8.2	28.7%
Kuwait	4.9	3.4	1.5	69%
Lebanon	5.8	1.4	4.4	24%
Libya	7.4	0.83	6.57	11%
Morocco	38.1	0.10	38.0	0.3%
Oman	5.3	2.2	3.1	42%
State of Palestine	5.5	0.25	5.25	4.5%
Qatar	3.0	2.3	0.7	76.7%
Saudi Arabia	34.0	13.7	20.3	40%
Syria	24.7	0.82	23.88	3.3%
Tunisia	12.3	0.06	12.24	0.5%
Türkiye	87.5	7.1	80.4	8.1%
United Arab Emirates	11.0	8.2	2.8	74%
Yemen	40.6	0.39	40.21	1%

These estimates should be read as approximations, particularly in places experiencing war or large-scale displacement. They nevertheless reveal something a standard political map cannot: countries are not sealed containers.

In Qatar, the “average resident” is not necessarily a Qatari citizen. In Jordan and Lebanon, refugee movements have profoundly shaped population patterns. Türkiye and Iran host millions of people born elsewhere. Meanwhile, countries such as Morocco, Algeria, Egypt, and Tunisia have comparatively small foreign-born shares even though many of their own citizens live abroad.

The table also introduces a question that the next section must answer: Why do the Gulf states contain such unusually large migrant populations? The short answer is labor demand. The longer answer involves oil, state policy, citizenship law, colonial legacies, and a system in which the people who build a country may possess limited power within it.

When the City Became a Political Stage

Cities do more than collect people. They allow people to see one another.

That became dramatically clear during the protest movements commonly called the Arab Spring. The name suggests one region experiencing one democratic season. Reality was less tidy. It was not a single revolution, its effects extended beyond Arab countries, and in several places the “spring” lasted only long enough to be followed by repression, war, or political winter.

The immediate spark came from Tunisia. In December 2010, street vendor Mohamed Bouazizi set himself on fire after years of economic insecurity and humiliating treatment by officials. His death became a symbol of grievances that were already widespread: unemployment, corruption, rising prices, police abuse, political exclusion, and the feeling that ordinary people were being treated as inconveniences in their own countries.

Demonstrations spread through Tunisian cities and forced President Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali from power in January 2011. Protests then appeared across the region. The crowds differed from one country to another, but their demands often shared a vocabulary: bread, dignity, justice, jobs, accountability, and political voice.

Tunisia: The Opening That Narrowed

Tunisia initially appeared to offer the most promising democratic transition. It held competitive elections, adopted a new constitution, and developed a political system in which secular and religious parties negotiated with one another.

The gains proved fragile. Beginning in 2021, President Kaïs Saïed suspended parliament, removed the prime minister, weakened judicial and electoral institutions, and concentrated authority in the presidency. Opponents, journalists, and civil-society figures have faced growing pressure. Tunisia did not simply “return to 2010,” but its democratic opening narrowed dramatically. Freedom House’s Tunisia profile documents this concentration of presidential power.

Egypt: A Revolution, an Election, and Another Strongman

Egypt’s uprising filled Cairo’s Tahrir Square and brought an end to Hosni Mubarak’s thirty-year presidency. The country held elections, and Mohamed Morsi became president in 2012. His government faced severe opposition, economic problems, and growing political conflict. In 2013, the military removed him from power.

Abdel Fattah al-Sisi subsequently became president and constructed an even more centralized political system. Egypt still contains the people, organizations, and memories produced by 2011, but the state has severely restricted dissent, independent journalism, and organized political opposition. Current assessments describe an authoritarian system with extensive repression of peaceful critics. Human Rights Watch’s 2026 Egypt report traces that consolidation.

The Egyptian uprising therefore did change history—but not in the simple manner imagined by either its supporters or opponents. Removing a ruler and transforming the institutions that supported him turned out to be very different tasks.

Syria: Protest, War, and an Unfinished Transition

In Syria, peaceful demonstrations in 2011 were met with violent repression. The uprising developed into a civil war involving the Assad government, opposition forces, Kurdish organizations, extremist movements, Russia, Iran, Türkiye, the United States, and other outside powers. Cities such as Aleppo, Homs, and Raqqa became battlefields. Millions of Syrians fled the country, while millions more were displaced internally.

For years, the Assad government survived despite the enormous destruction. Then, in December 2024, opposition forces captured Damascus and the regime collapsed with startling speed. Transitional authorities led by President Ahmed al-Sharaa began the difficult work of creating a new political order.

That does not mean Syria’s story is settled. Questions remain about minority rights, armed groups, regional autonomy, displaced populations, reconstruction, foreign involvement, and the institutions of a future state. United Nations assessments in 2026 described both real openings and profound fragility. The Syrian transition should be written in pencil, with an eraser nearby. The United Nations’ 2026 assessment emphasizes that uncertainty.

Other Countries, Other Outcomes

Libya’s uprising contributed to the fall of Muammar Gaddafi, but the country fragmented among rival governments, militias, and foreign-supported factions. Yemen’s political transition gave way to civil war and foreign intervention. Bahrain’s government suppressed mass protests with assistance from neighboring Gulf states. Morocco and Jordan introduced limited reforms while preserving their monarchies.

The Arab Spring was therefore neither a complete failure nor a completed revolution. It changed rulers in some places, political language in many places, and public expectations throughout the region. It also revealed that authoritarian systems are more than individual dictators. They are networks of military commands, police forces, courts, businesses, foreign alliances, and patronage systems. A crowd can remove the man at the top. Rebuilding everything beneath him is harder.

Iran: Connected, but Not the Same Story

Iran is not an Arab country, and Iranian protest movements should not be folded casually into the Arab Spring.

Iran’s Green Movement followed the disputed presidential election of 2009. In 2022, the death of Jina Mahsa Amini after her detention by the morality police helped ignite the Woman, Life, Freedom movement. Women publicly removed head coverings, students organized demonstrations, and protesters challenged both compulsory dress rules and the authority of the Islamic Republic.

A further nationwide protest wave began in late December 2025, amid economic anger and broader opposition to the government. Iranian authorities responded with severe repression, arrests, communication restrictions, and reported killings. United Nations experts described serious violations while urging the government to permit peaceful dissent and public dialogue. The UN human-rights statement from January 2026 stresses that these demonstrations belong to Iran’s own continuing political struggle.

The geography resembles other protest movements: large cities, university campuses, public squares, transit networks, and digital communication all matter. The history and political institutions, however, are distinctly Iranian.

The Screen in the Square

Smartphones and social media did not cause the Arab Spring. They altered the speed at which people could discover that they were not alone.

A photograph, video, slogan, or report of police abuse could travel from a neighborhood to an entire country in minutes. Protesters could locate demonstrations, warn others about roadblocks, and show events to international audiences. Projects such as Syria Tracker used crowdsourced information to map killings and human-rights violations.

But digital tools have never belonged exclusively to protesters. Governments use phone data, facial recognition, surveillance software, internet shutdowns, disinformation, and social-media monitoring. The device that helps organize a demonstration may also record the identities and locations of the people attending it.

Sociologist Zeynep Tufekci argues that networked protest can mobilize enormous crowds quickly while still lacking the durable organizations needed to negotiate, govern, and survive repression. Technology can help a crowd find itself. It cannot, by itself, write a constitution, repair a court system, create public trust, or decide who collects the garbage on Monday morning.

Once again, the city is a promise—and a plumbing problem.

A Region of Layers, Not Labels

Who are Southwest Asians and North Africans?

They are not one people, one religion, one ethnicity, or one political experience. They include citizens and noncitizens, refugees and long-settled communities, Arabic speakers and speakers of Persian, Turkish, Kurdish, Hebrew, Amazigh languages, and many others. They live in ancient urban cores, oil-built metropolitan regions, refugee neighborhoods, mountain towns, river valleys, suburbs, informal settlements, and rapidly expanding cities.

The region gave rise to some of humanity’s earliest urban experiments, but it is not trapped in antiquity. Its cities are places where ancient water systems, medieval markets, colonial boulevards, glass towers, migrant neighborhoods, protest squares, and smartphone networks occupy the same landscape.

That raises our next question. Why do these cities and populations look the way they do? Why are some Gulf societies composed largely of people born abroad? Why did certain countries become fabulously wealthy while others struggled with debt, war, or foreign intervention?

To answer those questions, we must turn to colonialism, oil, labor, and the unequal geography of development.

Concept Check

1. How did agricultural surpluses help make early urban life possible without automatically causing cities to appear?
2. Why is the idea of a single, uniform “Islamic city” misleading?
3. What does the foreign-born population table reveal that a political map does not?
4. Why did the Arab Spring produce such different outcomes in Tunisia, Egypt, Syria, Libya, and the Gulf states?
5. How can smartphones strengthen both protest movements and state surveillance?

Works Cited (APA)

Abu-Lughod, J. L. (1987). The Islamic city—Historic myth, Islamic essence, and contemporary relevance. International Journal of Middle East Studies, 19(2), 155–176.

Bayat, A. (2017). Revolution without revolutionaries: Making sense of the Arab Spring. Stanford University Press.

Diamond, J. (1997). Guns, germs, and steel: The fates of human societies. W. W. Norton.

Fouberg, E. H., & Moseley, W. G. (2017). Understanding world regional geography (2nd ed.). Wiley.

Freedom House. (2025). Tunisia: Freedom in the World 2025 country report. https://freedomhouse.org/country/tunisia

Human Rights Watch. (2026). World report 2026: Egypt. https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2026/country-chapters/egypt

Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights. (2026, January 13). Experts urge Iran to break cycle of violence, create space for dialogue. https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2026/01/experts-urge-iran-break-cycle-violence-create-space-dialogue

Tufekci, Z. (2017). Twitter and tear gas: The power and fragility of networked protest. Yale University Press.

United Nations. (2026). Common country analysis: Syrian Arab Republic. https://syria.un.org/en/download/205236/312773

United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division. (2024). World population prospects 2024. https://population.un.org/wpp/

United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division. (2025). International migrant stock 2024: Key facts and figures. https://www.un.org/development/desa/pd/content/international-migrant-stock