From 16 and 17 centuries, European powers began to March eastward. According to their geographical knowledge at that time, they called different areas in the East "Far East", "Middle East" and "Near East" according to their distance. Later, these three concepts were widely used by the international community.
Because the understanding and division of countries are not consistent, these concepts have no clear scope and boundaries. Generally, "Far East" refers to the eastern part of Asia farthest from Western Europe, including China, North Korea, South Korea, Japan and the Pacific coast of Russia. It is customary to sometimes classify Southeast Asian countries as the Far East.
"Middle East" is mentioned the most frequently, but people have different views on it. At first, "Middle East" specifically refers to Iran and Afghanistan, but later, the connotation and extension of the concept of the Middle East have been greatly expanded.
At present, academic circles divide the Middle East into narrow sense and broad sense. In a narrow sense, it refers to the countries and regions in West Asia and North Africa (except Afghanistan) at the junction of Asia, Africa and Europe. In a broad sense, it refers to the vast areas from Afghanistan in the east to Morocco and Mauritania along the Atlantic coast of Africa in the west, including Turkey in the north and the southern tip of the Arabian Peninsula in the south.
In a narrow sense, there are 22 countries in the Middle East, with a total area of150,000 square kilometers and a total population of about 300 million. Because the residents of most countries in the Middle East belong to the Arab nation and believe in Islam, "Middle East" is often associated with Arab countries and Islamic countries.
Extended data:
The historical evolution of the Middle East issue can be summarized as "one, two, three and four", that is, one ancestor, two nationalities, three exiles and four wars. One ancestor, two nationalities. Palestine was called Canaan in ancient times, and its residents were called Canaanites. Originally Sumerians in Arabia. Around 1 1 century BC, the Philistines along the Aegean Sea moved to Canaan.
In the 5th century BC, Herodotus, a Greek historian, called the area "Palestine" for the first time, which means "land of Philistines" in Greek, and it has been used ever since. About 1900 BC, another branch of the Semitic tribe, led by the patriarch Abraham (a prophet of Christianity, Judaism and Islam), moved from Ur in the two river basins to Canaan.
According to the Bible, Abraham and his wife Sarah gave birth to Isaac, and they were the ancestors of the Jews. After the Jews fled to Egypt, Moses led many people out of Egypt and back to Canaan until the establishment of the State of Israel after World War II.
Abraham and his concubine Hagar, an Egyptian, gave birth to Ishmael. Ishmael was not allowed by Sarah and was driven to the Arabian Peninsula to multiply. They are the ancestors of Arabs in the northern part of the peninsula, and the prophet Muhammad of Islam is his descendant.
In the early days of the founding of the People's Republic of China, Jews and Christians were hostile to Muhammad. With more and more followers of Muhammad, Arab cavalry began to expand abroad. Islam split in the 7th century. Those who support the descendants of Muhammad and those who accept the caliph as the representative of God gradually form "Shiites" and "Sunnis".
References:
Middle East-Baidu Encyclopedia