Geographically the Near East lies between Orient and Occident. In a unique position at the heart of the Middle East, between Anatolia and Arabia on one axis, and Mesopotamia and Egypt on the other, lie the lands now denominated as Syria, Lebanon and Jordan. Since the dawn of history, merchants, armies and travellers have crossed their mountains and deserts along ancient highways and docked ships in their eastern Mediterranean ports.

With the rise of the great civilizations of the Ancient World this trade became a highly organized and lucrative business, given impetus by the domestication of the camel. Vast quantities of staple commodities, manufactured goods and luxury items were transported along well-defined routes. For reasons of safety, traders and their pack animals usually travelled in groups, forming a caravan. Market towns appeared at the junctions of major routes, in desert oases, along the coastline and in high mountain valleys. These soon grew into prosperous and cosmopolitan caravan cities.

Dura Europos was a frontier town for Romans and Persians. From here caravans crossed the desert to Palmyra, the wealthy trading emporium of luxurious villas and magnificent temples. ‘The bride of the desert’, which for a while controlled a virtual caravan empire, is one of the most impressive of all classical sites.

The city of Ugarit, home of the world’s first alphabet, boasted one of the best harbours on the eastern Mediterranean. Damascus, flourishing at the time of David and Solomon (c. 1,000 BC), was the centre of the Umayyad caliphate and is still a great metropolis as capital of modern Syria. Aleppo, perhaps the most picturesque and unspoilt of Arab cities, is dominated by a magnificent citadel built by the Zengids and Ayyubids in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.

But the most spectacular archaeological site in the Middle East is Petra. Hidden in a canyon at the confluence of several caravan routes, the city monopolized the spice trade from Arabia. Monumental architecture deriving from a range of Mediterranean styles was hewn out of the living rock, a variegated red and ochre sandstone.

The incursions of the Crusaders met with ultimately victorious Saracen resistance. Today the castles of both sides remain as evocative reminders of that extraordinary era when East met West and the latter retired, bruised militarily but having established a lasting habit of trading and cultural contacts that would play a major role in the development of European civilisation over the ensuing centuries.