Region Profile: 33 Rustic Facts From the Middle East

Saudi Arabia developed robotic camel jockeys because too many 4-year old slave boys were dying. Child slave jockeys were outlawed in 2005.

27. In 2013, rats in Iran grew so big that snipers had to be deployed to combat the cat-sized rats.

28. Turkey was planning a TV show where a rabbi, a Buddhist monk, an Orthodox priest, and an imam attempt to convert 10 atheists each week, with any converts offered a free pilgrimage to one of the four holy sites. The Diyanet denied permission for an imam to appear and the program was canceled.

29. Ancient Egyptian Gods Horus and Set battled it out for dominion over Egypt by trying to force the other to consume his semen.

30. A man named Omar Borkan Al Gala was kicked out of Saudi Arabia for being "too handsome". While attending Riyadh's annual Janadriyah Festival, religious police escorted him out because they believed women would "fall for him" and become disarrayed from their husbands.

Shibam is an ancient mud skyscraper city in Yemen, which has been dubbed the ‘Manhattan of the Desert.’

32. In Israel, on Yom Kippur eve, so much of the population is observing the holiday that the streets are almost completely empty, and secular Israelis have made it a holiday tradition to bike and rollerblade through the empty streets.

33. The Iran women's national soccer team fielded up to 8 men in 2015.