Between 1516 and the mid-19th century the main interest of the Ottoman authorities in the territories of modern Jordan was to maintain the al-shami pilgrimage route of the holy sanctuaries of Islam in Mecca and Medina. To ensure the safety of the pilgrim caravans good relations were maintained with the local Bedouin tribes. An annual payment was paid by the state (khuwwa or surra) to their chiefs to facilitate the passage of the pilgrims or simply to leave them alone.

The region enjoyed relative stability due to being the route of the hajj sharif (pilgrimage) caravans to Mecca. Sultans and governors took great care of the caravans. Khans, water installations and fortifications were built and maintained along the route and military patrols were formed to protect it.

In the early 1700s, the (Al-Qasimi) Qawasim confederation migrates to the coast of the Arab Gulf from the Persian littoral. Here, they establish their main base in Julfar (later Ras al-Khaimah), soon extending their sway all along the lower Gulf, across areas of the east coast and towns on the Persian littoral.

The newly built Palace of Schwetzingen (built on the site of a former palace that actually dates back to 1350) flourishes under the Palatine Prince Elector Karl Theodor. Today a heritage site of great cultural significance, it contains some 100 sculptures and is known for its Türkischer Garten, a garden in the Turkish style with a mosque (constructed 1779–91 and the earliest mosque-style and largest structure of its kind in any German garden), designed by French architect Nicolas de Pigage and with “Oriental” details that are for decorative purposes only.

"Palace Schwetzingen" is bulit and flourised under the Palatine Prince Elector Carl Theodor. The baroque castle complex includes more than 100 sculptures and a "Türkischer Garten" ("Turkish Garden") with a mosque, biult from 1779 to 1791, that makes it the earliest mosque- style in Germany and the largest structure of its kind in a german garden. It was designed by Nicolas de Pigage. However the oriental details are not for religious but for decorative purposes.

Travellers from Europe approached the notion of the Near East with dreams of a “holy world” and “treasuries of wisdom”. The European desire for the “Orient” arose partly as a result of the Enlightenment, which since the 1800s had already changed the public psyche, filtering down from the rationalism of intellectuals to the scientification of the public. In addition, the many wars of the period, especially the Napoleonic Wars, produced in the people nostalgia; a desire for distance, the unknown, and the halcyon days of the past. Romantic-era authors and philosophers, much disturbed by these very topics (e.g. Friedrich Schlegel), thus attempted to escape into something magical – the “Orient” seemed to them, and their readers, an ideal imaginary world.

Prussian King Friedrick II commissions G. W. von Knobelsdorff to build Sanssouci Palace in Potsdam.

In 1765 Imam Muhammad bin Saud establishes the First Saudi State in Arabia, starting with the Najd region, and making its capital the city of Dir‘iyya.

The era of Sturm und Drang (Storm and Stress) in literature (i.e. the works of Goethe, Schiller, Hölderlin and Herder) is characterised by lyricism, fantasy, freedom, juvenility and idealism, which is felt most keenly in the dramatic writing of the period.

The painting by Johann Heinrich Wilhelm Tischbein, Goethe in der Campagna (1786/87), exemplifies Classicism in art at this time.