Sunrise in Persepolis, capital of the ancient Achaemenid kingdom. From this particular Persian empire, Greece would have been the Near West, China the Near East, and current-day Cambodia the Middle East
History and its related language are written by the victors; but as history changes sometimes redundant terminology remains in use. One such term is the phrase Middle East, which is outdated, colonialist, increasingly pejorative, and should be consigned to the same dustbin as ?Near East? and ?Darkest Africa?, writes Darius Sanai
Are you a Far Easterner" Or maybe a Near Easterner" Do you know anyone who still describes themselves in this way" I don?t. Conversely, I know people from East Asia and people from South Asia.
Bas relief at Persepolis. Nobody referred to its residents as Middle Easterners: each empire believes itself to be at the centre of civilisation, an often hubristic view which becomes more exposed as empires recede And yet, I am, apparently, a Middle Easterner. The phrase is house style to describe the region in all the world?s leading media, whatever its political viewpoint, from the BBC and the Economist to the New York Times, CNN and Fox News. The term is used to describe the swathe of countries from Iran (where I am from) in the north to Yemen in the south. The Middle East sometimes also refers to places further west, like Lebanon, Israel, Palestine and even Egypt, which is in Africa.
Middle East is a redundant term, as steeped in colonialist...