Mashriq
The Mashriq (مشرق, also Mashreq, Mashrek) is the region of Arab countries to the east of Egypt. This comprises the countries of Lebanon, Palestine, Jordan, Syria and Iraq.
Poetically the ‘place of sunrise’, the name is derived from the verb sharaqa (شرق ‘to shine, illuminate, radiate’ and ‘to rise’), referring to the direction where the sun rises, namely, the east.
As it refers to countries bounded between the Mediterranean Sea and Iran, it is therefore the companion term to Maghreb (western part of North Africa).
Egypt occupies an ambiguous position: while it has cultural, ethnic and linguistic ties to both the Mashriq and the Maghreb, it is unique and different from both. Therefore, Egypt is located at the center/heart of the Arab world and that is why the headquarters of the Arab League is located in the Egyptian capital of Cairo. Thus, it is usually seen as being part of neither; however, when it is grouped with one or the other, it is generally considered part of the Mashriq due to its closer ties to the Levant. Egypt and the Levant were often ruled as a single unit, as under the ancient Egyptian New Kingdom, the Umayyad, Abbasid, the Fatimid caliphates, the Ayyubid dynasty, the Mamluks, and for a time under Muhammad Ali Pasha. There are also similarity between the Egyptian and the nearby Levantine dialects.
