Fertile Crescent

American  

noun

1. an agricultural region extending from the Levant to Iraq.

2. an area in the Middle East: formerly fertile, now partly desert.

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Fertile Crescent British  

noun

1. an area of fertile land in the Middle East, extending around the Rivers Tigris and Euphrates in a semicircle from Israel to the Persian Gulf, where the Sumerian, Babylonian, Assyrian, Phoenician, and Hebrew civilizations flourished

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Etymology

Origin of Fertile Crescent

First recorded in 1910–15

Example Sentences

To start, they’re believed to be the first domesticated food crop, with their earliest cultivation dating back 10,000 years in the Fertile Crescent.

From Salon • May 14, 2025

This practice of ritual burial is believed to have originated among early Neolithic groups in the "Fertile Crescent" - a region encompassing parts of modern-day Turkey, Israel, Syria and Lebanon - before gradually spreading westward.

From BBC • Dec. 29, 2024

Two-thousand years ago, forts were constructed by the Roman Empire across the northern Fertile Crescent, spanning from what is now western Syria to northwestern Iraq.

From Science Daily • Oct. 27, 2023

High temperatures and scarce water are drying out swaths of Iraq that were once part of a verdant region known as the Fertile Crescent.

From New York Times • Aug. 1, 2023

Only when European settlers arrived by sea in 1652, bringing with them their Fertile Crescent crop package, could agriculture thrive in South Africa’s Mediterranean zone.

From "Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies" by Jared M. Diamond