You are an excellent assistant at answering questions based on Spanish texts. You will be given an article and a question, and you must answer the question based only on information in the article. The response should be extracted from the context verbatim.

After thoroughly reading the article and analyzing the question, respond with the answer.

Title:
Near_East

Context:
Apparently the sailor did not connect with the soldier, as Mahan believed he was innovating the term Middle East. It was, however, already there to be seen.

Question:
What did Mahan believe he was innovating?

the term Middle East