"Arab" and "Arabians" redirect here.

For other uses, see Arab (disambiguation) and

Arabian (disambiguation).
Arabs
‫ب‬ٌ ‫ع َر‬
َ (Arabic)
ʿarab
Total population
c. 400 million[1][2] to 420+ million[3][4]
Map of the Arab Diaspora in the World.svg
Regions with significant populations
Arab League
350,000,000[5][6]
Brazil 1.9[7]–20 million (partial origins)[8][9]
France 4–7 million[10] to 5.5[11] million people of North African (Arab or
Berber) descent[12]
United States 3,700,000[13]
Turkey 1–2 million (native Arabs)[14]
3,650,000 (Syrian refugees)[15]
Argentina 3,500,000 of full or partial Arab ancestry[16]
Colombia 3,200,000[17][18][19][20][21]
Israel 1,700,000[22]
Chad 1,689,168 (est.)[23]
Venezuela 1,600,000[24]
Iran 1,500,000[25]
Germany 1,401,950[26]
Spain 1,350,000[27][28]
Mexico 1,100,000[29]
Chile 800,000[30][31][32]
Canada 750,925[33]
Italy 705,968 (native Arabs)[34]
Netherlands 480,000–613,800[35]
Malaysia More than 500,000[citation needed]
United Kingdom 500,000[36]
Australia 500,000[37]
Ivory Coast 300,000[38]
Honduras 280,000[39]
Ecuador 170,000 [40]
Niger 150,000 (2006)[41]
Indonesia 118,866 (2010)[42]
El Salvador More than 100,000[43][44][45][46][47]
Uruguay 75,000[48]
Ethiopia 74,000
Tanzania 70,000[49]
Eritrea 50,000–70,000[citation needed]
Kenya 59,021 (2019)[50]
Languages
Arabic
Religion
Predominantly:
Islam
(Mostly Sunni, large Shia minority, smaller Ibadi, Alawite minorities)
Significant minority:
Christianity
(Greek Orthodox, Melkite Catholic, Roman Catholic, Protestant)
Smaller minority: Other monotheistic religions
(Druze, Judaism, Baháʼí Faith)
Historically: Pre-Islamic Arabian polytheism
Related ethnic groups
Afro-Arabs, Berbers,[51] Kurds,[52] Persians, Jews,[53] Samaritans, Assyrians,
Copts,[54] and other Afro-Asiatic speakers[55][56][57]
a Arab ethnicity should not be confused with non-Arab ethnicities that are also
native to the Arab world. But there are instances in which some non-Arab
ethnicities native to the Arab world simultaneously identify as Arab and another
non-Arab ethnicity through either cultural assimilation (partial/incomplete
Arabization within certain communities), or as a pan-ethnic identity,[57] as well
as partially Arabized communities.
The Arabs (singular: Arab; singular Arabic: ‫ِي‬
ٌّ ‫ع َرب‬,
َ DIN 31635: arabīyun, Arabic
pronunciation: [ˈʕarabiːjun], plural Arabic: ‫ع َرب‬, َ DIN 31635: ʿarab, Arabic
pronunciation: [ˈʕarab] (listen)), also known as the Arab people, are an ethnic
group[a] who carry that ethnic identity, share a common ancestry, culture, history
and/or language, mainly inhabiting the Arab world in Western Asia and North Africa,
and to a lesser extent the Horn of Africa, and the western Indian Ocean islands
(including the Comoros).[67] An Arab diaspora is also present around the world in
significant numbers, most notably in the Americas, Western Europe, Turkey,
Indonesia, and Iran.[67][68][69][70]

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.[71] The Arabs
appear to have been under the vassalage of the Neo-Assyrian Empire, as well as the
succeeding Neo-Babylonian, Achaemenid, Seleucid, and Parthian empires.[72] The
Nabataeans, an Arab people, established a kingdom centered in Petra (modern-day
Jordan) in the 3rd century BCE. Arab tribes, most prominently the Ghassanids and
the Lakhmids, appeared in the southern Syrian Desert from the mid-3rd century CE
onward, during the middle to later stages of the Roman and Sassanid empires.[73]
Before the expansion of the Rashidun Caliphate, the term "Arab" referred to any of
the both largely nomadic and settled Arabic-speaking people from the Arabian
Peninsula, the Syrian Desert, and Lower Mesopotamia, with some even reaching what
is now northern Iraq.[74] With the spread of Islam and the early Muslim conquests
of the 7th and 8th centuries, Arab culture and civilization experienced a period of
significant expansion and influence across the Middle East, North Africa, and parts
of Europe and Asia.[75][76]

The Arabs forged the Rashidun, Umayyad, Abbasid, and Fatimid caliphates, whose
borders at their zenith reached southern France in the west, China in the east,
Anatolia in the north, and Sudan in the south, forming one of the largest land
empires in history.[77] In the early 20th century, World War I signalled the
beginning of the end of the Ottoman Empire, which had ruled much of the Arab world
since its conquest of the Mamluk Sultanate in 1517.[78] The Ottoman defeat in World
War I culminated in the 1922 dissolution of the empire and the subsequent
partitioning of Ottoman territories, which formed some of the modern Arab states in
the Mashriq.[79] Following the adoption of the Alexandria Protocol in 1944, the
Arab League was founded on 22 March 1945.[80] The Charter of the Arab League
endorsed the principle of a unified Arab homeland.[81]

The ties that bind Arabs together are ethnic, linguistic, cultural, historical,
identical, nationalist, geographical, and political.[82] The Arabs have their own
customs, language, literature, music, dance, media, cuisine, dress, society,
sports, and mythology, as well as significant influence on architecture and Islamic
art.[83] Arabs have greatly influenced and contributed to diverse fields, notably
architecture and the arts, language, philosophy, mythology, ethics, literature,
politics, business, music, dance, cinema, medicine, science, and technology in
ancient and modern history.[84]

Arabs are a diverse group in terms of religious affiliations and practices, in the
pre-Islamic era, most Arabs followed polytheistic religions. However, some tribes
had adopted Christianity or Judaism and a few individuals, known as the hanifs,
apparently observed another form of monotheism.[85] Nowadays 93 percent of Arabs
are Muslims[86] (the remainder consisted mostly of Arab Christians[87]), while Arab
Muslims are only 20 percent of the global Muslim population.[88] Presently, Arab
Muslims primarily belong to the Sunni, Shia, Ibadi, and Alawite denominations. Arab
Christians generally follow Eastern Christianity, such as those within the Oriental
Orthodox Churches, the Eastern Catholic Churches, or the Eastern Protestant
Churches.[89][90]

Etymology
Further information: Arab (etymology)

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).
The earliest documented use of the word Arab in reference to a people appears in
the Kurkh Monoliths, an Akkadian-language record of the Assyrian conquest of Aram
(9th century BCE). The Monoliths used the term to refer to Bedouins of the Arabian
Peninsula under King Gindibu, who fought as part of a coalition opposed to Assyria.
[91] Listed among the booty captured by the army of the Assyrian king Shalmaneser
III in the Battle of Qarqar (853 BCE) are 1000 camels of "Gîndibuʾ the Arbâya" or
"[the man] Gindibu belonging to the Arabs" (ar-ba-a-a being an adjectival nisba of
the noun ʿarab).[91]

The related word ʾaʿrāb is used to refer to Bedouins today, in contrast to ʿarab
which refers to Arabs in general.[92] Both terms are mentioned around 40 times in
pre-Islamic Sabaean inscriptions. The term ʿarab ('Arab') occurs also in the titles
of the Himyarite kings from the time of 'Abu Karab Asad until MadiKarib Ya'fur.
According to Sabaean grammar, the term ʾaʿrāb is derived from the term ʿarab. The
term is also mentioned in Quranic verses, referring to people who were living in
Madina and it might be a south Arabian loanword into Quranic language.[93]

The oldest surviving indication of an Arab national identity is an inscription made

in an archaic form of Arabic in 328 CE using the Nabataean alphabet, which refers
to Imru' al-Qays ibn 'Amr as 'King of all the Arabs'.[94][95] Herodotus refers to
the Arabs in the Sinai, southern Palestine, and the frankincense region (Southern
Arabia). Other Ancient-Greek historians like Agatharchides, Diodorus Siculus and
Strabo mention Arabs living in Mesopotamia (along the Euphrates), in Egypt (the
Sinai and the Red Sea), southern Jordan (the Nabataeans), the Syrian steppe and in
eastern Arabia (the people of Gerrha). Inscriptions dating to the 6th century BCE
in Yemen include the term 'Arab'.[96]

The most popular Arab account holds that the word Arab came from an eponymous
father named Ya'rub, who was supposedly the first to speak Arabic. Abu Muhammad al-
Hasan al-Hamdani had another view; he states that Arabs were called gharab
('westerners') by Mesopotamians because Bedouins originally resided to the west of
Mesopotamia; the term was then corrupted into arab.

Yet another view is held by al-Masudi that the word Arab was initially applied to
the Ishmaelites of the Arabah valley. In Biblical etymology, Arab (Hebrew: arvi)
comes from the desert origin of the Bedouins it originally described (arava means
'wilderness').

The root ʿ-r-b has several additional meanings in Semitic languages—including

'west, sunset', 'desert', 'mingle', 'mixed', 'merchant' and 'raven'—and are
"comprehensible" with all of these having varying degrees of relevance to the
emergence of the name. It is also possible that some forms were metathetical from
ʿ-B-R, 'moving around' (Arabic: ʿ-B-R, 'traverse') and hence, it is alleged,
'nomadic'.[97]

History
Main article: History of the Arabs
Antiquity
Main article: Pre-Islamic Arabia
Historical Arab states and dynasties
Petra Siq, entrance to the ancient Nabatean city of Petra, Jordan.jpg
Ancient Arab states
Arab empires and caliphates
Eastern dynasties
Western dynasties and caliphates
Arabian Peninsula
East Africa
Current monarchies
vte
Pre-Islamic Arabia refers to the Arabian Peninsula prior to the advent of Islam in
the early 7th century. Limited local historical coverage of these civilizations
means that archaeological evidence, foreign accounts and Arab oral traditions are
largely relied on to reconstruct this period. Prominent civilizations at the time
included Dilmun, which arose around the 4th millennium BCE and lasted to 538 BCE,
and Thamud, which arose around the 1st millennium BCE and lasted to about 300 CE.
From the beginning of the first millennium BCE, Southern Arabia also contained a
number of kingdoms, such as the Sabaean kingdom (Arabic: ‫سـبَـأ‬,
َ romanized: Saba',[98]
possibly Sheba),[99] while the littoral zone of Eastern Arabia was controlled by
the Parthian and Sassanians from 300 BCE.

Origins and early history

Further information: Ancient Semitic-speaking peoples and Proto-Arabic
According to Arab-Islamic-Jewish traditions, Ishmael was father of the Arabs, to be
the ancestor of the Ishmaelites.

Both Judaism and Islam see him as the ancestor of Arab peoples.[100]
Ishmael is recognized by Muslims as the ancestor of several prominent Arab tribes
and being the forefather of Muhammad. A–Z of Prophets in Islam and Judaism,
Wheeler, Ishmael Muslims also believe that Muhammad was the descendant of Ishmael
that would establish a great nation, as promised by God in the Old Testament.
Genesis 17:20[101]
Zeep, Ira G. (2000). A Muslim primer: beginner's guide to Islam, Volume 2.
University of Arkansas Press. p. 5. ISBN 978-1-55728-595-9.
Ishmael was considered the ancestor of the Northern Arabs and Muhammad was linked
to him through the lineage of the patriarch Adnan. Ishmael may also have been the
ancestor of the Southern Arabs through his descendant Qahtan.
Assyrians referred to the Arab Tribes as Ishmaelites, or "Shumu'ilu" as recorded in
their inscriptions.[102]
"Zayd ibn Amr" was another Pre-Islamic figure who refused idolatry and preached
monotheism, claiming it was the original belief of their [Arabs] father Ishmael.
[103]
The tribes of Central West Arabia called themselves the "people of Abraham and the
offspring of Ishmael."[104]

Traditional Qahtanite genealogy

The first written attestation of the ethnonym Arab occurs in an Assyrian
inscription of 853 BCE, where Shalmaneser III lists a King Gindibu of mâtu arbâi
(Arab land) as among the people he defeated at the Battle of Qarqar. Some of the
names given in these texts are Aramaic, while others are the first attestations of
Ancient North Arabian dialects. In fact several different ethnonyms are found in
Assyrian texts that are conventionally translated "Arab": Arabi, Arubu, Aribi and
Urbi. Many of the Qedarite queens were also described as queens of the aribi. The
Hebrew Bible occasionally refers to Aravi peoples (or variants thereof), translated
as "Arab" or "Arabian". The scope of the term at that early stage is unclear, but
it seems to have referred to various desert-dwelling Semitic tribes in the Syrian
Desert and Arabia.[citation needed] Arab tribes came into conflict with the
Assyrians during the reign of the Assyrian king Ashurbanipal, and he records
military victories against the powerful Qedar tribe among others.

Old Arabic diverges from Central Semitic by the beginning of the 1st millennium
BCE.[citation needed]

Nabataean trade routes in Pre-Islamic Arabia.

Medieval Arab genealogists divided Arabs into three groups:

"Ancient Arabs", tribes that had vanished or been destroyed, such as ʿĀd and
Thamud, often mentioned in the Quran as examples of God's power to vanquish those
who fought his prophets.
"Pure Arabs" of South Arabia, descending from Qahtan. The Qahtanites (Qahtanis) are
said to have migrated from the land of Yemen following the destruction of the
Ma'rib Dam (sadd Ma'rib).
The "Arabized Arabs" (mustaʿribah) of Central Arabia (Najd) and North Arabia,
descending from Ishmael the elder son of Abraham, through Adnan (hence, Adnanites).
The Book of Genesis narrates that God promised Hagar to beget from Ishmael twelve
princes and turn him to a great nation.[105] The Book of Jubilees claims that the
sons of Ishmael intermingled with the 6 sons of Keturah, from Abraham, and their
descendants were called Arabs and Ishmaelites:
And Ishmael and his sons, and the sons of Keturah and their sons, went together and
dwelt from Paran to the entering in of Babylon in all the land towards the East
facing the desert. And these mingled with each other, and their name was called
Arabs, and Ishmaelites.

— Book of Jubilees 20:13

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, c. 480 BCE. Xerxes I tomb relief.
Assyrian and Babylonian Royal Inscriptions and North Arabian inscriptions from 9th
to 6th century BCE, mention the king of Qedar as king of the Arabs and King of the
Ishmaelites.[107][108][109][110] Of the names of the sons of Ishmael the names
"Nabat, Kedar, Abdeel, Dumah, Massa, and Teman" were mentioned in the Assyrian
Royal Inscriptions as tribes of the Ishmaelites. Jesur was mentioned in Greek
inscriptions in the 1st century BCE.[111]

Life-size bronze bust sculpture of historian Ibn Khaldun.[112]

Ibn Khaldun's Muqaddima distinguishes between sedentary Arab Muslims who used to be
nomadic, and Bedouin nomadic Arabs of the desert. He used the term "formerly
nomadic" Arabs and refers to sedentary Muslims by the region or city they lived in,
as in Yemenis.[113] The Christians of Italy and the Crusaders preferred the term
Saracens for all the Arabs, Muslims.[114] The Christians of Iberia used the term
Moor to describe all the Arabs and Muslims of that time.

Muslims of Medina referred to the nomadic tribes of the deserts as the A'raab, and
considered themselves sedentary, but were aware of their close racial bonds. The
term "A'raab" mirrors the term Assyrians used to describe the closely related
nomads they defeated in Syria. The Quran does not use the word ʿarab, only the
nisba adjective ʿarabiy. The Quran calls itself ʿarabiy, "Arabic", and Mubin,
"clear". The two qualities are connected for example in Quran 43:2-3, "By the clear
Book: We have made it an Arabic recitation in order that you may understand". The
Quran became regarded as the prime example of the al-ʿara