Religion

By the seventh century much of the Middle East was ruled by the Christian Byzantine Empire, Armenia was Christian, and there were many Christians in Iran and central Asia. Most of these Christians came under Muslim rule in the seventh century, although the Byzantine Empire did not finally succumb until the fifteenth century. These areas eventually became predominantly Muslim, but Christian communities continued to exist down to the twenty-first century. Many Arab Christians are "Greek" Orthodox or Melchite, continuing the Byzantine tradition, accepting the Nicene and Chalcedonian Creeds and recognizing the seven ecumenical councils, of which the last was at Nicaea in 787. The last of the great Orthodox Fathers, John of Damascus (c. 675–749), lived under Muslim rule and wrote a treatise against Islam. There are four Orthodox patriarchates in the Middle East, those of Constantinople, which has precedence of honor, Alexandria, Antioch (now based in Damascus), and Jerusalem. The latter three are mainly Arabic speaking, and that of Antioch has the largest following.

Several Middle Eastern churches rejected the Chalcedonian formula of the "two natures" of Christ, speaking rather of one "divine-human nature," and are often called Monophysite ("one nature"). These include the Armenian and the Syrian Orthodox (Jacobite) Churches, as well as the Coptic Church of Egypt and Ethiopia. The Syrians and the Egyptian Copts suffered considerable persecution under the Byzantines and at first welcomed Muslim rule. The Syrian Church continued quite strong through the fourteenth century. The Coptic Church enshrines a strong sense of Egyptian ethnic identity and is characterized by an ascetic and monastic spirituality as well as a veneration for its ancient martyrs. In the early twenty-first century about 10 percent of Egyptians are Copts.

The Nestorian Church, also non-Chalcedonian, was particularly strong in Iraq and eastward into central Asia beyond the Muslim empire. Nestorian scholars were among the main translators of Greek philosophy into Arabic. Many of the Mongols, who devastated much of the Middle East and sacked Baghdad in 1258, were Nestorians, but after the Mongols converted to Islam at the end of the thirteenth century, the Nestorian Church declined rapidly. In the twenty-first century the small Nestorian community in Iraq calls itself "Assyrian."

Europeans attempted to impose their form of Christianity and their rule in the Crusades, ultimately unsuccessfully and with often disastrous results for local Christians. They received support, however, from the Maronite Church of Lebanon, which dates from about the seventh century and which eventually adhered to the Roman Catholic Church, while retaining many of its distinctive practices. In recent centuries groups from other Eastern churches, known as Uniates, have also adhered to Rome while retaining many of their distinctive practices. Since the nineteenth century, Protestant missionary efforts have resulted in the establishment of small Protestant communities in many Middle Eastern countries.