There is a pretty extensive literature (which is not exactly hard to find) of climatic variability, drought, and influences of these on various societies in the Middle East / SW Asia at both long (e.g., Kaniewski et al., 2012, Xoplaki et al., 2016, Flohr et al., 2017, Jones et al., 2019, Fleitman et al., 2022) and short (e.g., Donat et al., 2013, Barlow et al., 2016) time scales. The general point is summed up nicely by the title of the Kaniewski et al., 2012 paper, i.e., Drought is a recurring challenge in the Middle East.