Mesopotamia is known as the Fertile Crescent because the land has rich soil for farming.
The term was created by the archeologist James Henry Breasted (University of Chicago) because of the shape of the crescent moon of the referred geographical area.
It is surrounded by the Nile, Jordan, Orontes, Tigris and Euphrates rivers and occupies about 500,000 km². The region comprises from the Nile valley and the eastern shore of the Mediterranean to the northern Syrian desert, and from northern Arabia, all of Mesopotamia to the Persian Gulf; Territories that belong to the current countries of Egypt, Israel, the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and Lebanon, as well as parts of the Jordan River, Syria, Iraq, southeastern Turkey and southwestern Iran.