The Middle East is diverse in terms of language, ethnicity, religion, and degrees of modernization. This chapter deals with a number of predominantly Arab countries, mostly Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, and Egypt, where science was present throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and only episodically with other Arab countries in the region, relative newcomers to science. It also covers three largely non-Arab countries: Turkey, Iran, and Israel, the latter being a special case in many respects. By 2015 the territories under Israeli control actually had a majority of Arabs even though the official ideology of the state, Zionism, stipulated that Israel is a “Jewish state.”