Answer -long
Dale is correct Camels is the reason.
Un-inventing the wheel is a unique tale and not nearly a dumb as it sounds. My information originated from several ARAMCO magazines with the primary info authored by Columbia University Professor Richard Bulliet of the Middle East Institute.
1. Countries where the wheel was eliminated for transportation. Ancient Persia, Mesopotamia, Arabia—generally the current countries including Iran, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Israel, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Bahrain, Yemen, Oman, UAE, Jordan, portions of Turkey, Azerbaijan Pakistan, Afghanistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan.
2. It seems counter intuitive but the “un-inventing” of the wheel fostered long distance trade. It also promoted the camel industry and strengthened and broadened the importance of a nomadic people. Professor Bulliet points out that the wheel appearing as other forms for example the potter’s wheel and the water wheel were not eliminated. But the transportation application of the highly developed chariot and the cart wheels of the earlier Sumerians and Assyrians were lost. The reasons differ in debate but over hundreds of years, the lack of suitable wood and metal in the desert (south), extra weight, and the lack of a good method to harness an animal for the mountainous east were factors. Horses and oxen were choked by the harnesses of the time and camels (of the era) could not be harnessed for carts. So it was that the domesticated camel without the assistance of the wheel came into use for trade with the Far East and India. The various routes of the silk road, the Persian Gulf and Red Sea trade routes functioned by thousands of camels in train averaging twenty miles a day, each camel carrying up to 500 pounds, all without the weight, repairs, and drag of a cart. The camel could move in difficult terrain, eat from the land (not like a horse or cattle that required carrying grain). Its stamina, ability to work in a wide range of weather, and water retention was superb. The camel didn’t get bogged down in sand, wadis, mountains, and provided milk, warmth and meat.
In addition, the camel was cheaper to operate than a cart. Thus using the camel the caravan leaders, the traders, and the breeders on the routes became invaluable, influential, and eventually in their own best interests developed a camel only delivery system.
In an unforgiving landscape native nomadic traders developed territories, private routes, and watering places and defended them with vigor. Eventually families became extended, developed clans, tribes and ruled sections of huge expanses of almost nothing, but they ruled it completely. Since they exerted such influence with goods (the equivalent of modern day control of supply chain economics) the camel trader and breeders became more and more powerful and the wheel as used for transportation had no value to them, fell into disuse, abandonment, then eliminated from more than fifty generations of memory as a transportation tool. Only with Suez Canal (1869) sea routes to the far east, WWI, armored and status (Rolls, Bentley) vehicles, and railroads did the grip loosen. Cool huh?
3. Bonus: Political component(s). Simplistically, in the mid-east all is negotiable and fraught with middlemen each getting his piece. The area is old. Its people have been around for a long time. Over time nomadic tribes linked geographically and through arranged marriage, security alliances, and paid “rights of way” developed into the kingdoms that remain today. It is a very hierarchical society. Only since the 1920’s has culture changed in the region and there are many subsurface links still honored by hundreds of years old family ties and tradition. Democracy as practiced in many other parts of the world screws up mid east history, traditions, and way of life. On a map of that region pick out most any named place away from a large city and if it is not a description of some landscape feature the chances are the name will be one of a family or tribe. These territories are the family honor and legacy. One of the more easily recognized examples is the ownership of Saudi Arabia by the Saud family. For a thousand years the heads of tribes were the suppliers to the “civilized” world of eastern spices, cloth, art, ceramics and should be considered equal to the chairman of the board of today’s transportation companies. Then as now they ruled their territory by religious interpretation, tribute, negotiation, and intimidation. As they didn’t need the “western” wheel for a thousand years, many feel that “western” democracy is something that they also can do without.
