The Arab world comprises a large group of countries, mainly located in West Asia and North Africa. While the majority of people in the Arab world are ethnically Arab, there are also significant populations of other ethnic groups such as Berbers, Kurds, Somalis and Nubians, among other groups. Arabic is used as the lingua franca throughout the Arab world..Arabic, Najdi Spoken. EthnologueArabic, Hijazi Spoken. EthnologueArabic, Gulf Spoken. EthnologueSimeone-Sinelle, Marie-Claude (2005). "Arabic Lingua Franca in the Horn of Africa". Encyclopedia of Arabic Language and Linguistics. 2 – via Academia.edu.
The Arab world is usually defined as the 19 states where Arabs form at least a plurality of the population. At its maximum defination it consists of the 22 members of the Arab League, an international organization, which on top of the 19 plurality Arab states also includes 3 non-Arab countries, namely the Comoros, Djibouti and Somalia. The region stretches from the Atlantic Ocean in the west to the Arabian Sea in the east, and from the Mediterranean Sea in the north to the Indian Ocean in the southeast. The eastern part of the Arab world is known as the Mashriq ("east" in Arabic) and the western part as the Maghreb ("west" in Arabic).
According to the World Bank, the Arab world has a total population of 456 million inhabitants and a gross domestic product of $2.85 trillion, as of 2021. The region is economically quite diverse, and includes some of the wealthiest as well as poorest populations in the world.
In post-classical history, the Arab world was synonymous with the historic Arab empires and caliphates. Arab nationalism arose in the second half of the 19th century along with other nationalist movements within the Ottoman Empire. The Arab League was formed in 1945 to represent the interests of Arab people and especially to pursue the political unification of the Arab countries, a project known as pan-Arabism.
Terminology In page 9 of Best Divisions for Knowledge of the Regions, 10th century Arab geographer Al Maqdisi used the term Arab regions to refer to the lands of the Arabian Peninsula (Bahrain, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates and Yemen). He also considered Iraq, alongside Upper Mesopotamia (Iraq, Syria and Turkey), Ash-Sham (Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Palestine, Syria and Turkey), Egypt and the Maghreb (Algeria, Libya, Mauritania, Morocco, Tunisia and Western Sahara Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic) to be part of the Arab regions.
Malta, an island country in Southern Europe whose national language, Maltese, derives from Arabic through Siculo‑Arabic, is not included in the Arab world. Similarly, Chad, Eritrea, and Israel recognize Arabic as one of their official or working languages but are not included in the region because they are not members of the Arab League.
Definition The linguistic and political denotation inherent in the term Arab is generally dominant over genealogical considerations. In Arab states, Standard Arabic is used by the government. Local vernacular languages are referred to as Darija ( "everyday/colloquial language"Wehr, Hans: Dictionary of Modern Written Arabic (2011); Harrell, Richard S.: Dictionary of Moroccan Arabic (1966).) in the Maghreb or Aammiyya ( "common language") in the Mashreq. The majority of the vocabulary in these vernaculars is shared with Standard Arabic; however, some of them also significantly borrow from other languages, such as Berber, French, Spanish and Italian in the Maghreb.Tilmatine Mohand, Substrat et convergences: Le berbére et l'arabe nord-africain (1999), in Estudios de dialectologia norteaafricana y andalusi 4, pp. 99–119.
Standard territorial
Although no globally accepted definition of the Arab world exists, all countries that are members of the Arab League are generally acknowledged as being part of the Arab world.Benjamin Hätinger, The League of Arab States, (GRIN Verlag: 2009), p. 2.
The Arab League is a regional organisation that aims, among other things, to consider in a general way the affairs and interests of the Arab countries and sets out the following definition of an Arab:
This standard territorial definition is sometimes seen to be inappropriateBaumann: 8. or problematic,Deng: 405. and may be supplemented with certain additional elements (see ancillary linguistic definition below).Kronholm: 14.
Member states of the Arab League
( ): Berber is the second official language (minority) ( ) ( ): Comorian and French are the other official languages ( ): French is the other official language ( ) ( ): Kurdish is the second official language (minority) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ): Berber is the second official language (minority) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ): Somali is the first official language ( ): English is the second official language ( ) ( ) ( ) ( )
Ancillary linguistic
As an alternative to,Rejwan: 52. or in combination with,Frishkopf: 61: "No universally accepted definition of 'the Arab world' exists, but it is generally assumed to include the twenty-two countries belonging to the Arab League that have a combined population of about 280 million (Seib 2005, 604). For the purposes of this introduction, this territorial definition is combined with a linguistic one (use of the Arabic language, or its recognition as critical to identity), and thereby extended into multiple diasporas, especially the Americas, Europe, Southeast Asia, West Africa, and Australia." the standard territorial definition, the Arab world may be defined as consisting of peoples and states united to at least some degree by Arabic language, culture or geographic contiguity,Sullivan and Ismael: ix. or those states or territories in which the majority of the population speaks Arabic, and thus may also include populations of the Arab diaspora.
When an ancillary linguistic definition is used in combination with the standard territorial definition, various parameters may be applied to determine whether a state or territory should be included in this alternative definition of the Arab world. These parameters may be applied to the states and territories of the Arab League (which constitute the Arab world under the standard definition) and to other states and territories. Typical parameters that may be applied include: whether Arabic is widely spoken; whether Arabic is an official or national language; or whether an Arabic cognate language is widely spoken.
While Arabic dialects are spoken in a number of Arab League states, Literary Arabic is official in all of them. Several states have declared Arabic to be an official or national language, although Arabic is not as widely spoken there. As members of the Arab League, however, they are considered part of the Arab world under the standard territorial definition.
Somalia's official and national language is Somali while Arabic is recognized as the second language,Onwuegbule, Chinyere Gift, Chukwuka A. Chukwueke, and Nkama Anthony Ezeuduma. "OPTIMAL INDIGENOUS LANGUAGE USE AS STRATEGY FOR NATIONAL DEVELOPMENT." The Melting Pot 4.1 (2018). the same with Somaliland which also recognizes English. Both Arabic and Somali belong to the larger Afro-Asiatic language family. Somali is the most widely used language and contains many Arabic loan words.Diana Briton Putman, Mohamood Cabdi Noor, The Somalis: their history and culture, (Center for Applied Linguistics: 1993), p. 15.
Similarly, Djibouti has two official languages, Arabic and French. It also has several formally recognized national languages; besides Somali, many people speak Afar, which is also an Afro-Asiatic language. The majority of the population speaks Somali and Afar, although Arabic is also widely used for trade and other activities.Colin Legum, Africa contemporary record: annual survey and documents, Volume 13, (Africana Pub. Co.: 1985), p. B-116.
The Comoros has three official languages: Comorian, Arabic and French. Comorian is the most widely spoken language, with Arabic having a religious significance, and French being associated with the educational system.
Chad, EritreaEritrea . The World Factbook. Central Intelligence Agency. and Israel all recognize Arabic as an official or working language, but none of them is a member-state of the Arab League, although both Chad and Eritrea are observer states of the League (with possible future membership) and have large populations of Arabic speakers.
Israel is not a part of the Arab world. By some definitions,Rinnawi: xvi. Arab citizens of Israel may concurrently be considered a constituent part of the Arab world.
Iran has about 1.5 million Arabic speakers. Iranian Arabs are mainly found in Ahvaz, a southwestern region in the Khuzestan Province; others inhabit the Bushehr and Hormozgan provinces and the city of Qom. Mali and Senegal recognize Hassaniya, the Arabic dialect of the Moorish ethnic minority, as a national language. Greece and Cyprus also recognize Cypriot Maronite Arabic under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. Additionally, Malta, though not part of the Arab world, has as its official language Maltese. The language is grammatically akin to Maghrebi Arabic.
History
Early history
The Arabs historically originate as a Central Semitic group in the northern Arabian Peninsula, the Southern Levant and the Syrian Desert. Arab tribes and federations included the Nabataeans, Tanukhids, Salihids, Ghassanids.
Arab expansion is due to the early Muslim conquests of the 7th and 8th centuries. Iraq was conquered in 633, Levant (modern Syria, Israel, Palestine, Jordan and Lebanon) was conquered between 636 and 640 CE. Egypt was conquered in 639, and gradually Arabized during the medieval period. A distinctively Egyptian Arabic language emerged by the 16th century. The Maghreb was also conquered in the 7th century, and gradually Arabized under the Fatimids. Islam was brought to Sudan from Egypt during the 8th to 11th centuries. The culture of Sudan today depends on the tribe, some have a pure Nubian, Beja, or Arabic culture and some have a mixture of Arab and Nubian elements.Bechtold, Peter R. (1991). "More Turbulence in Sudan" in Sudan: State and Society in Crisis. ed. John Voll (Westview Press (Boulder)) p. 1.
Ottoman and colonial rule The Arab Abbasid Caliphate fell to the Mongol invasions in the 13th century. Egypt, the Levant and Hejaz also came under the Turkish Mamluk Sultanate.
By 1570, the Turkish Ottoman Empire controlled most of the Arab world. However, Morocco remained under the rule of the Zenata Wattasid dynasty, which was succeeded by the Saadi dynasty in the 16th to 17th centuries. The Ajuran Sultanate also held sway in the southern part of the Horn region.
The sentiment of Arab nationalism arose in the second half of the 19th century along with other nationalisms within the declining Ottoman Empire.
When the Ottoman Empire collapsed as a result of World War I, much of the Arab world came to be controlled by the European colonial empires: Mandatory Palestine, Mandatory Iraq, British protectorate of Egypt, French protectorate of Morocco, Italian Libya, French Tunisia, French Algeria, Mandate for Syria and the Lebanon and the so-called Trucial States, a British protectorate formed by the sheikhdoms on the former "Pirate Coast".
These Arab states only gained their independence during or after World War II: the Republic of Lebanon in 1943, the Syrian Arab Republic and the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan in 1946, the Kingdom of Libya in 1951, the Kingdom of Egypt in 1952, the Kingdom of Morocco and Tunisia in 1956, the Republic of Iraq in 1958, Algeria in 1962, and the United Arab Emirates in 1971.
By contrast, Saudi Arabia had fragmented with the fall of the Ottoman Empire, and was unified under Ibn Saud of Saudi Arabia by 1932.