Transport

TRANSPORT

Ships, caravans, railroads, and pipelines carry Middle Eastern goods to market.

Until the twentieth century, and in many places until the middle of that century, people, animals, and water were the primary modes of transport in the Middle East.

Shipping

Waterways are few and not always navigable, but coastal navigation has always been important. Of the various river systems, only two were navigable—the Nile and the Tigris and Euphrates system. All were used for irrigation as well as transport, and canal systems were built to extend their benefits. The Nile runs north through East Africa, emptying across a broad delta into the eastern Mediterranean Sea. The longest river in the world, it flows from Lake Victoria through Uganda, Sudan, and Egypt. Since the prevailing winds are northerly, boats without motors can sail upstream and float downstream. The Tigris and Euphrates rivers are less suited to navigation, since their currents are swifter, their levels vary, and they often change course before merging into the Shatt al-Arab, which drains into the Persian Gulf. Because of these means of access to the sea, both areas have long transported bulk goods by water and built seaports that accommodated goods from other coastal trading areas, such as Turkey and Syria. Since antiquity, the coastal people of the Mediterranean have traded, traveled, and warred among themselves over the riches of one another's lands.

Caravans

For the local movement of goods to rivers or seaports, and even for long-distance overland journeys, caravans were relied on. Caravans of mules and, especially, camels, took over from wheeled traffic at the end of the Roman era. Camel loads varied, generally ranging from 550 to 660 pounds; the speed of a caravan was 2.5 to 3 miles per hour; the usual daily stage was 15 to 20 miles. Caravans differed greatly in size, depending on need and the availability of people and animals: In 1820, before the Suez Canal was built, the Suez caravan had about 500 camels; in 1847, the Baghdad–Damascus caravan had some 1,500 to 2,000 camels; and the Damascus–Baghdad caravan, some 800 to 1,200. During the 1870s, some 15,000 pack animals made three round trips a year on the Tabriz–Trabzon route (Iran to Turkey), carrying the equivalent of the contents of seven or eight sailing ships each way. Boats and pack animals were adequate for the
relatively small volume of traffic under traditional conditions before the advent of the industrial revolution and the expansion of European trade and imperialism into the Middle East.

Steamships

During the nineteenth century, transport was revolutionized. During the 1820s and 1830s, regular steamer lines linked the Middle East with Europe across the Mediterranean, with Russia and Austria across the Black Sea, and with India through the Red Sea. Later, services were established in the Caspian Sea and the gulf. By the closing decades of that century, the bulk of the region's foreign trade was carried on steamships, and freight costs were drastically reduced. Starting in the 1830s, steam tugs and steamboats were used on the Nile and on the Euphrates, soon carrying a large portion of domestic trade. Since no port improvements had occurred since Roman times, the steamers were loaded and unloaded by lighters, which were boats used to carry cargo from ships to ports. The first modern port facilities were installed in Alexandria in 1818 (followed by later improvements), at Suez in 1866, in İzmir in 1875, in Aden in 1888, in Beirut in 1895, and in Istanbul in 1902. Except for Alexandria and Suez, all these harbors were built with European capital. The opening of the Suez Canal in 1869 by a French company was a major advance for world navigation.

Railroads

The first railway in the Middle East was begun in 1851, at British insistence, to link Alexandria with Cairo and Suez, speeding transport on the Mediterranean–India route. Like all Egypt's main lines, it was financed by the government. Soon after, British capital built two lines from İzmir in Turkey to the countryside. The Ottoman Empire, however, wanted a railroad that linked Istanbul with their provinces of Anatolia, Syria, and Iraq; following the completion of the Vienna–Istanbul line in 1888 (which became the Orient Express), it gave a concession to a German company for an Istanbul–Ankara line, later extended to Basra. This Berlin–Baghdad Railway aroused much international controversy, which was settled just before the outbreak of World War I. When the war ended in 1918, the line reached Aleppo in northern Syria, and a small stretch had been built in Iraq. Other foreign-owned short lines were built in Palestine, Lebanon, and Syria. The Hijaz Railroad (1903–1908), linking Damascus, in Syria, to Medina, in western Saudi Arabia (near Mecca), was financed by contributions from Muslims throughout the world. During World War I, the British army built extensive rail lines in Iraq and Palestine and put the Arabian section of the Hijaz railroad out of service. In Iran, the Russians built a line to Tabriz. After the war, Turkey doubled its mileage and Iran built a railroad between the Caspian Sea and the Persian Gulf. Since then, important lines have been built in Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Syria. Table 1 shows the length of rail lines built from 1870 to 2000. Rail service reduced both the time and costs of transport. On the Ankara–Istanbul route, the rate per ton-mile fell from 10 cents to 1 cent; on the Damascus–Beirut line, from 4.5 cents to 1.5 cents; the journey from Damascus to Cairo was reduced from 25 days to 18 hours. In some areas, telegraph lines accompanied or preceded the railroads.

Length of rail service (in kilometers)

country	1870	1890	1914	1939	1948	1975	2000
SOURCE: the international year book and statesmen's who's who, 2003. east grinstead, u.k.: csa, 2002. africa south of the sahara, 2003.
london: europa publications, 2002. the middle east and north africa, 2003. london: europa publications, 2002. statistical yearbook 1999.
new york: united nations, 2002.
table by ggs information services, the gale group.
egypt	1,400	1,797	4,314	5,606	6,092	4,856	8,600
iran	—	—	—	1,700	3,180	4,944	6,600
iraq	—	—	132	1,304	1,555	2,203	2,000
jordan	—	—	—	332	332	420	700
lebanon	—	—	—	232	423	417	200
palestine/israel (as of 1948)	—	—	—	1,188	1,225	902	n.d
saudi arabia	—	—	800	—	—	612	700
sudan	—	—	2,396	3,206	3,242	4,556	5,000
syria	—	—	—	854	867	1,761	2,400
turkey	230	1,443	3,400	7,324	7,634	8,138	10,300
total	1,630	3,240	11,042	21,746	24,550	28,809	36,500

Modern means of transport, as of 2003

	paved roads (thousands of km)	passenger motor vehicles (thousands)	commercial motor vehicles (thousands)	ships (thousands of grt/tons)*	airlines (millions of passenger/km)
* grt is gross registered tons
note: the dates for the figures in this table range from 1993 to 2001. n.d. = no data available.
source: The International Year Book and Statesmen's Who's Who, 2003. East Grinstead, U.K.: CSA, 2002. Africa South of the Sahara, 2003.
London: Europa Publications, 2002. The Middle East and North Africa, 2003. London: Europa Publications, 2002. Statistical Yearbook 1999.
New York: United Nations, 2002.
table by ggs information services, the gale group.
egypt	39.0	1,154	554	1,350	8,036
iran	93.5	1,793	235	3,943	8,539
iraq	39.9	773	323	240	20
israel	16.5	1,460	371	611	12,418
jordan	5.5	245	112	42	4,065
kuwait	3.8	747	140	2,291	6,207
lebanon	6.2	1,299	92	301	1,504
saudi arabia	47.3	2,762	2,340	1,133	18,820
sudan	3.9	285	53	43	148
syria	43.3	138	322	498	1,410
turkey	62.6	4,539	1,590	5,896	n.d.
united arab emirates	3.3	346	89	746	15,633

Modern Services

From the mid-1900s on, the Middle East has been served by an extensive network of telegraph and telephone lines, which extend to all cities and towns, and to almost all villages. Computer, electronic mail, and Internet and fax services exist in main centers as well.

Modern roadways were first built during the late nineteenth century; except for those in northern Iran and Lebanon, they played no significant role in the transport system of the period. After World War I, and then again after World War II, they were greatly expanded and improved. Motor vehicles, which came to the Middle East before World War I, carry the bulk of inland transport. Air transport has a similar history: every country has its own airline and the region has become a hub of air traffic, connecting North America and Europe with Africa, India, and Asia.

Because of the Suez Canal, the Middle East plays an important part in world navigation. Just before Egypt nationalized the canal in 1956, it carried 13 percent of world shipping but 20 percent of oil tankers. The canal has been repeatedly enlarged and deepened to accommodate increasingly larger tankers and supertankers. During the 1990s, most petroleum producers maintained a large fleet of tankers, and oil-refining and consumer nations had sizeable merchant and tanker fleets; still, the share of the Middle East in world shipping was only 1 percent, and its share in world tankers only 3 percent. Nationalization of all transport facilities has been a fact of Middle Eastern life, beginning with Turkey's railways during the 1920s.

Oil has brought another form of transport to the region: pipelines. The first, opened in 1934, carried Iraq's oil to the Mediterranean. Since then, far longer and larger pipelines have been built to transport Saudi Arabian and Iraqi oil through Syria to the Mediterranean, as well as Iraqi oil through Turkey and Saudi Arabia. Many pipelines no longer operate due to various political conflicts. Oil-producing countries also have extensive networks of internal pipelines that transport crude petroleum to refineries.

see also berlin–baghdad railway; hijaz railroad; persian (arabian) gulf; shatt al-arab.

Bibliography

American Automobile Manufacturers Association. World Motor Vehicles Data. Detroit, 1989.

Earle, Edward. Turkey, the Great Powers, and the Bagdad Railway: A Study in Imperialism. New York: Macmillan, 1923.

International Air Transport Association. World Air Transport Statistics. Montréal: Author, 1991.

Issawi, Charles. An Economic History of the Middle East and North Africa. New York: Columbia University Press, 1982.

Kark, Ruth. "The Pilgrimage to Budding Tourism: The Role of Thomas Cook in the Rediscovery of the Holy Land." Travellers in the Levant: Voyagers and Visionaries, edited by Sarah Searight and Malcolm Wagstaff. Durham, U.K.: Astene, 2001.

charles issawi
updated by anthony b. toth