"The Fertile Crescent has always been in close touch with other parts of the Middle East: Turkey, Iran, the , and Egypt. Indeed the ties binding it to each of those subregions have usually been stronger and more numerous than those between any other two. With the Arabian peninsula there was, first of all, the blood tie. For millennia, the Fertile Crescent has been periodically replenished by waves of peoples and tribes migrating from the desert and settling in the steppes or sown areas of Syria and Iraq. In addition, the beduin tribes, following their camel pastures and the availability of water, travel each year hundreds of miles between their winter quarters in the peninsula and their summer abodes in the crescent. The nomads and semi nomads supplied the settled areas of Syria and Iraq with camels, the essential means of transport in the Middle East; with fine horses, used for ceremony and war, and with various animal products such as goat and camel hair."