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Where does Belly Dance come from?

In Turkey, this dance form is called Oriyantal Dans or Oriyantal Dansi. In Arabic-speaking countries, it is called Raqs Sharqi (sometimes spelled Raks Sharki). All of these names, both Turkish and Arabic, mean "dance of the East", or "dance of the Orient", so many of our American dance scholars today prefer the linguistically-correct term Oriental dance. It is also known as Middle Eastern Dance or M.E.D.

The music, props, and styling may all lend different looks and moods to a performance, but underneath it all, it's still Oriental dance or belly dance, whichever name you prefer to use for it.

Middle East and North Africa

The lands around the southern and eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea are often called the Middle East or the Near East. The term came from the first geographers in ancient Greece, for whom the region was both near and east. China and Japan are part of the Far East. (Dowling, Mike, "Mr. Dowling's Middle East and North Africa Page," available from http:// www.mrdowling. com/ 607mena.html; Internet; updated Thursday, November 24, 2005)

The Middle East and North Africa are two regions that are often grouped together because they have many things in common. Islam is the dominant religion and almost everyone speaks Arabic. Most of the Middle East and North Africa is a desert where very little rain falls. There are, however, many exceptions:

• Most Iranians are Muslims, but they are not Arabs. Until 1935, Iran was known as Persia, a culture that has existed for thousands of years. Most Iranians speak Farsi.
• The Turks originally came from the land northwest of India. They are also Muslims but speak Turkish rather than Arabic.
• The people of Lebanon primarily speak Arabic, but more than one-third are Christian. Lebanon has traditionally been a Christian Arabic nation, but Muslims now outnumber Christians because Muslims have tended to have more children. Most Arabs living in the United States are Lebanese.
• Most people in Israel speak Hebrew and practice Judaism. After World War II ended, the United Nations created Israel as a homeland for Jews.
• About twenty-five million Kurds live in the mountains between Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Turkey. The Kurds are Muslims, but they have the own language and culture. Many Kurds want to keep their traditional lifestyle and resist assimilating into the population of their host nations.
• A minority of the people of Morocco and Algeria are Berbers. The Berbers are the descendants of the people who lived in North Africa before the Arab invasion. The Berbers have their own traditions, but most Berbers today are Arabic-speaking Muslims.

Colonial Powers

British:	Egypt and the Sudan, Parts of Iran
French:	Algiers, Lebanon, Morocco (northern part), Tunisia
Spain:	Morocco (southern part)
Italy:	Libya, Eritrea., Ethiopia

Which means that in Algier, Morocco, and Lebanon, French is the common 2nd language, while it’s English for most of the rest.