Economic Life

Until very recently, about 60 percent of the popula­tion cultivated the traditional crops of the Mediterra­nean - cereals and olive and fig trees - whereas date palms and sugar cane predominated in the southern deserts.

Whereas most lands capable of cultivation have been planted with cereals, areas where water and good soil are lacking have been left to herders. Sheep are preponderant in all areas; goats also are kept in large numbers, especially in steppe and mountain­ous areas; and water buffalo have provided most animal power in the marshes of Iran and Iraq and the irrigated fields of Egypt. As transport has be­come increasingly mechanized, the use of the camel has declined, but the donkey still carries people and commodities everywhere. Neither cattle nor horses are important economically because of lack of pastur­age. Mineral resources are limited, with the excep­tion of petroleum in some states, and large-scale extraction has begun only relatively recently. Good­quality coal exists only in northwestern Turkey, but hydroelectric power and petroleum have been supply­ing energy for industrialization in recent decades.

The traditional handicrafts and manufactures of the Middle East and North Africa - metal working, glassware, textiles for articles of clothing, and woolen carpet-making - have suffered from the com­petition of foreign imports, but many countries are now promoting them for export. Four countries- Egypt, Israel, Syria, and Turkey - no longer con­form to the typical Third World economic pattern, in that one-fifth or more of their gross domestic product is derived from the manufacturing industry. Gener­ally, however, the countries of the Middle East and North Africa belong to the Third World, being still heavily dependent upon the export of primary prod­ucts and the import of food, consumer goods, equip­ment, and technology (Oxford Regional Economic Atlas 1964; Fisher 1971; Drysdale and Blake 1985).