In modern usage, the term "Arabs" tends to refer to those whose native language is Arabic and identify as such. In a source that compares Arabs in Europe to other socioethnic groups, Arabs are referred to as a socioethnic group.[69] This contrasts with the narrower traditional definition, which refers to the descendants of the Tribes of the Arabian Peninsula.[70]Islam started in Arabia, Arabic is the language of Islamic scripture, and most Arabs are Muslims. However, only 20% of Muslims are Arabs.[71]
The first mention of Arabs appeared in the mid-9th century BCE, as a tribal people in Eastern and Southern Syria and the northern Arabian Peninsula.[72] The Arabs appear to have been under the vassalage of the Neo-Assyrian Empire (911–612 BCE), as well as the succeeding Neo-Babylonian (626–539 BCE), Achaemenid (539–332 BCE), Seleucid and Parthian empires.[73] The Nabataeans, are an Arab people, who formed their Kingdom near Petra in the 3rd century BCE. Arab tribes, most notably the Ghassanids and Lakhmids, began to in the Southern Syrian Desert from the mid 3rd century CE onward, during the mid to later stages of the Roman and Sasanian empires.[74]
Before the expansion of the Rashidun Caliphate (632–661 C.E.), "Arab" referred to any of the largely nomadic and settled Arabic-speaking people from the Arabian Peninsula, Syrian Desert and Lower Mesopotamia, with some even reaching what is now northern Iraq.[75] Since the influence of Pan-Arabism in the 1950s and 1960s, "Arabs" has been taken to refer to a large number of people whose native regions became part of the Arab world due to the spread of Islam, Arabic tribes and the Arabic language throughout the region during the early Muslim conquests of the 7th and 8th centuries. These cultural and demographic influences resulted in the subsequent Arabisation of the indigenous populations.[76][77]
The Arabs forged the Rashidun (632–661), Umayyad (661–750), Abbasid (750–1517) and the Fatimid (901–1071) caliphates, whose borders reached Southern France in the west, China in the east, Anatolia in the north and the Sudan in the south. This was one of the largest land empires in history.[78] In the early 20th century, the First World War signalled the end of the Ottoman Empire, which had ruled much of the Arab world since conquering the Mamluk Sultanate in 1517.[79] The end culminated in the 1922 defeat and dissolution of the empire and the partition of its territories, forming the modern Arab states.[80] Following the adoption of the Alexandria Protocol in 1944, the Arab League was founded on 22 March 1945.[81] The Charter of the Arab League endorsed the principle of an Arab homeland whilst respecting the individual sovereignty of its member states.[82]
The Namara inscription, an Arabic epitaph of Imru' al-Qais, son of "Amr, king of all the Arabs", inscribed in Nabataean script. Basalt, dated in 7 Kislul, 223, viz. 7 December 328 CE. Found at Nimreh in the Hauran (Southern Syria).
Traditional Qahtanite genealogy
Nabataean trade routes in Pre-Islamic Arabia.
Assyrian relief depicting battle with camel riders, from Kalhu (Nimrud) Central Palace, Tiglath Pileser III, 728 BCE, British Museum
Arab soldier (Old Persian cuneiform: 𐎠𐎼𐎲𐎠𐎹, Arabāya)[106] of the Achaemenid army, circa 480 BCE. Xerxes I tomb relief.
Life-size bronze bust sculpture of historian Ibn Khaldun.[112]
Façade of Al Khazneh in Petra, Jordan, built by the Nabateans.
The ruins of Palmyra. The Palmyrenes were a mix of Arabs, Amorites and Arameans.
Fragment of a wall painting showing a Kindite king, 1st century CE
The Near East in 565, showing the Lakhmids and their neighbors
The imperial province of Arabia Petraea in 117–138 CE
Age of the Caliphs
Expansion under Muhammad, 622–632/A.H. 1–11
Expansion during the Rashidun Caliphate, 632–661/A.H. 11–40
Expansion during the Umayyad Caliphate, 661–750/A.H. 40–129
Tombstone of Muhammad (Left), Abu Bakr and Umar (right), Medina, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
The Great Mosque of Kairouan in Kairouan, Tunisia was founded in 670 by the Arab general Uqba ibn Nafi; it is the oldest mosque in the Maghreb[130] and represents an architectural testimony of the Arab conquest of North Africa
The Umayyad Mosque in Damascus, built in 715, is one of the oldest, largest and best preserved mosques in the world
The Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem, constructed during the reign of Abd al Malik
Mustansiriya University in Baghdad
Scholars at an Abbasid library in Baghdad. Maqamat of al-Hariri Illustration, 123.
Harun al-Rashid receiving a delegation sent by Charlemagne
Al-Azhar Mosque, commissioned by the Fatimid Caliph Al-Mu'izz for the newly established capital city of Cairo in 969
Arabesque pattern behind hunters on ivory plaque, 11th–12th century, Egypt
Soldiers of the Arab Army in the Arabian Desert carrying the Flag of the Arab Revolt
A map of the Arab world
The Near East in 565, showing the Ghassanids, Lakhmids, Kinda and Hejaz
Arab tribes before the spread of Islam
Arabian tribes before the spread of Islam
Post-card of Emir Mejhem ibn Meheid, chief of the Anaza tribe near Aleppo with his sons after being decorated with the Croix de Légion d'honneur on 20 September 1920
Old Bedouin man and his wife in Egypt, 1918
Commander and Amir of Mascara, Banu Hilal
Population density of the Arab world in 2008.
An overview of the different Arabic dialects
Arabic-speaking peoples in the Middle East and North Africa
Syrian immigrants in New York City, as depicted in 1895
Countries with significant Arab population and descendants.
Arab world
+ 5,000,000
+ 1,000,000
+ 100,000
Amel Bent,[dubious – discuss] a French-born Maghrebi pop singer
The Arab American National Museum in Dearborn, Michigan, the United States of America
Georgia and the Caucasus in 1060, during the final decline of the emirate
Kechimalai Mosque, Beruwala. One of the oldest mosques in Sri Lanka. It is believed to be the site where the first Arabs landed in Sri Lanka.
Baggara belt
Bas-relief: Nemesis, Allāt and the dedicator
The holiest place in Islam, the Kaaba in Al-Haram Mosque, is located in Mecca, the Hejazi region of Saudi Arabia
A Greek Orthodox Church during a snow storm in Amman, Jordan
An Abbasid-era Arabic manuscript
Arabic calligraphy
Aladdin flying away with two people, from the Arabian Nights, c. 1900
A giraffe from the Kitāb al-Ḥayawān (Book of the Animals), an important scientific treatise by the 9th century Arab writer Al-Jahiz.[318]
Illustration from Kitab al-Aghani (Book of Songs), by Abu al-Faraj al-Isfahani. The 14th-century historian Ibn Khaldun called the Book of Songs the register of the Arabs.[322]
Self portrait of renowned Lebanese poet/writer Khalil Gibran
A large plate of Mezes in Petra, Jordan
Mosaic and arabesque on a wall of the Myrtle court in Alhambra, Granada.
Arabic miniature depicting Al-Harith from Maqamat of al-Hariri
The Mosque-Cathedral of Córdoba, built by Abd al Rahman I in 987
Bayad plays the "Oud to The Lady," from the Bayad & Riyad, Arabic tale
Umm Kulthum was an internationally famous Egyptian singer.
Al-Lat was the god of Arabs before Islam; It was found in Ta'if
Averroes, founder of the Averroism school of philosophy, was influential in the rise of secular thought in Western Europe.
Ibn Arabi, one of the most celebrated mystic-philosophers in Islamic history.
Hevelius's Selenographia, showing Alhazen [sic] representing reason, and Galileo representing the senses. Alhazen has been described as the "world's first true scientist".[376]
Albategnius's Kitāb az-Zīj was one of the most influential books in medieval astronomy
The Tabula Rogeriana, drawn by al-Idrisi for Roger II of Sicily in 1154, is one of the most advanced ancient world maps. Modern consolidation, created from the 70 double-page spreads of the original atlas.
), also known as the Arab people, are an ethnic group[a] mainly inhabiting the Arab world in Western Asia, North Africa, the Horn of Africa, and the Western Indian Ocean islands (including the Comoros).[63] An Arab diaspora is established around the world in significant numbers, in the Americas, Western Europe, Indonesia, Pakistan, Turkey, India and Iran.[64][65][66][67][68]