Well, by some definitions it is. It's not always easy to decide where in Southwest Asia to draw the line between the Middle East and South Asia.
I learned a good word from the bookI'm listening to now, the mashreq, which refers to heartland of the Middle East--Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Kuwait, Jordan, Palestine--the "civilised" part of the Arab lands (as in, the agrarian and citified region, as compared to the nomadic region of Arabia). Sometimes it's taken to include Egypt, sometimes not, as Egypt is the border between it and the maghreb ("the West": the desert states of North Africa).
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2009-08-24 08:41 pm (UTC)I learned a good word from the bookI'm listening to now, the mashreq, which refers to heartland of the Middle East--Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Kuwait, Jordan, Palestine--the "civilised" part of the Arab lands (as in, the agrarian and citified region, as compared to the nomadic region of Arabia). Sometimes it's taken to include Egypt, sometimes not, as Egypt is the border between it and the maghreb ("the West": the desert states of North Africa).