What’s Significant About Mesopotamia Geography?

Mesopotamia geography rivers are the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, and the plain along the middle and lower reaches is almost entirely located within Iraq, where in the southeast it enters Iran, in the northwest enters Syria. The continuation of the plain is the Persian Gulf with its low-lying southwestern coast, to which Saudi Arabia and a number of small Arab states are located.

Explanation:

Mesopotamia geography features are manifested in the fact that it is a wide shallow hollow bounded by the Arabian plateau, the hills of Syria and mountain ranges – the Armenian Taurus and Zagros. The main centers of civilization development were located in Lower Mesopotamia, which was the most favorable part of the entire Fertile Crescent for agriculture, but poor in mineral resources and wood.

In addition, large-scale irrigation, which the Mesopotamians sought to develop as much as possible and without which farming was initially impossible here, led to rapid salinization of soils and a decrease in productivity. In the end, soil salinization and climate aridization led to the desolation of Southern Mesopotamia and its largest center – Babylon.

The territory of Upper Mesopotamia was a hilly steppe, sometimes turning into low mountains. Assyria was located in the east of Upper Mesopotamia and this name was used by Greek authors and accepted in science to designate a region with a center in the ancient city of Ashur on the Middle Tigris.

The geography of Mesopotamia should also include extreme poverty of the region with mineral resources, including metals, and wood from the earliest times stimulated the development of foreign trade and military expansion. The Mesopotamians exported textiles, grain and handicrafts, while they themselves sent trade and military expeditions for timber, metals and slaves.

The need to compensate for the lack of natural resources forced the Mesopotamian sovereigns to receive appropriate raw materials and products in the form of tribute from the mountainous periphery in the north and east, as well as to establish control over the main trade routes leading west to the Mediterranean Sea.