Sociocultural Practices | Society and Culture

Running head: SOCIETY AND CULTURE
SOCIETY AND CULTURE
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The sociocultural practices among the people of Gulf, Egypt, the Levant, Iran, and
Iraq are integrated with the century old culture of the middle-east, influenced by different
ethnicities and ages of history (Goldschmidt 2018). Firstly, religion plays a very huge role in
the culture and societal practices of regular people, in their day to day lives. As the
monotheistic religions such as Christianity, Islam and Judaism are originated in these regions
of Middle East, centuries ago and this to the day, these religion hold a strong importance in
the daily lives and decision making of people living in the Gulf, Egypt, the Levant, Iran, and
Iraq (Haynes 2016). Secondly, as for the traditional shops and markets in all these countries,
they follow a shared sociocultural discipline of closing down on their respective religious
holidays (Väyrynen 2018). The Islamic shops are mostly closed on Fridays, the shops owned
by Judaic owners are closed on Saturdays and the shops owned by the Christian orthodox
owners close down on Sundays (Cleveland 2018). Thirdly, another very important
sociocultural practice that is shared by all the Middle East countries such as Gulf, Egypt, the
Levant, Iran, and Iraq is the tradition system of family. All the Arabic families, traditionally,
live under one roof, with the cousins, niece, second and third cousins, nephews – all as a
single unit of a joint family (Lotfata 2015). Strong kinship is recognized as an important
attribute of Arabic family bonding and they believe celebrating every festival to every daily
life in a prosperous joy of togetherness and family happiness (Desmet, Ortuño-Ortín and
Wacziarg 2017). Thirdly, all the countries in the middle -east such as Gulf, Egypt, the Levant,
Iran, and Iraq – the traditional clothing for both men and women is of great importance and
value to sociocultural foundations and the continuity of it. The garments or rather the clothing
are made up of cotton, wool or linen and rich embellishments with silk is very traditional.
Rich varieties of silk such as Baldachin and Damask are commonly used and incorporated,
threaded into clothing worn by both men and women of these countries (Aljammaz, Wang
and Peng 2019). A Jellaba is an outer gown worn by the men belonging from Arabic families,

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is an traditional attire with long and wide sleeves along with continuous long skirt till the
toes. A headdress named as ‘Kaffiyeh’ is worn by the Arabic males as an traditional cultural
dress wear (Choueiri 2016). For the women living in these countries such as Gulf, Egypt, the
Levant, Iran, and Iraq, ‘Hijab’ or ‘burkha’ which forms a veil over the woman’s face, is both
traditional and symbolically religious as the compliance with the same has been mentioned
in the holy book of Quran (Garduno 2015). Fourthly, the traditional music of Sufism forms
another very crucial shared sociocultural practice of all these countries. Dance and music, in
accordance with the age old principles of Sufism, is offered as a prayer to God and is inherent
to the shared sociocultural practices of all these Middle East countries. Fifthly, food culture
starting from Pita bread to skewered, grilled meats namely ‘seekh kebabs’ forms the most
integral part of the traditional, delicious middle east cuisine, in all of these countries.
Egypt was a part of the Ottoman Empire for centuries and some parts of its culture has
been influenced by the Turkish culture. Firstly, the lexical influence of the Turkish language
has become pronounced and found more clarity through the passage of ages and words such
as ‘bek’ and ‘pasha’ are integrated in local language used in the streets and homes of the
Egypt. Secondly, in the sociopolitical scenario in Egypt is also influenced by ministers who
actually belonged from a Turkish family. Activists, jurists and politicians such as Qasim
Amin, Ekmeleddin İhsanoğlu, Abdel Khalek Sarwat, Mohamad Sharif are the most renowned
examples. They all acted bravely in tough times of their country Egypt and earned a lot of
respect and prestige in addition to trust and faith amongst the general public of Egypt. All of
them, at some point or the other has influenced and solved the political air and sociocultural
stability of the country, in times of hardships and in times of need. On the contrary though, in
Turkey – the influence of Egypt is still existent such as presence of Egyptian markets in
Istanbul is a great illustration. Not only market culture, but the food culture is influenced by
Egyptians as well.