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

Human-made climate change is driving a yearslong extreme drought in Iran, Iraq and Syria, an area that encompasses a region known as the Fertile Crescent and a cradle of civilization, scientists said on Wednesday.

From New York Times • Nov. 8, 2023

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

The sphinx and pyramids were built by people fed on crops originally native to the Fertile Crescent, not to Egypt.

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