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[French Arabe, from Latin Arabs, from Greek Araps, Arab-, from Arabic ‘arab.]
Arab Ar'ab adj.The derivation of the term Arab is unclear, and the meaning of the word has changed several times through history. Some Arab scholars have equated Joktan (Gen. 10.25) with the ancient Arab patriarch Qahtan whose tribe is thought to have originated in S Arabia. The Assyrian inscriptions (9th cent. B.C.) referred to nomadic peoples inhabiting the far north of the Arabian Peninsula; the sedentary population in the south of the peninsula was not called Arab. In classical times the term was extended to the whole of the Arabian Peninsula and to all the desert areas of the Middle East, and in the Middle Ages the Arabs came to be called Saracens.
The Arab Empire
It was the Muslims from Arabia, nomads and settled people alike, whose invasions in the 6th and 7th cent. widely diffused both the Arabic language and Islam. They founded a vast empire, which at its height stretched from the Atlantic Ocean on the west, across North Africa and the Middle East, to central Asia on the east. The Arabs became the rulers of many different peoples, and gradually a great Arab civilization was built up. Although many of its cultural leaders were not ethnically Arabs (some were not even Muslims, but Christians and Jews), the civilization reflected Arab values, tastes, and traditions. Education flourished in the Islamic lands, and literature, philosophy, medicine, mathematics, and science were particularly developed by the Arabs. At the same time in all the provinces of the huge empire, except in Persia, Arabic became the chief spoken language. The waves of Arab conquest across the East and into Europe widened the scope of their civilization and contributed greatly to world development. In Europe they were particularly important in Sicily, which they held from the 9th to the late 11th cent., and the civilization of the Moors in Spain was part of the great Arabic pattern. Christian scholars in those two lands gained much from Islamic knowledge, and scholasticism and the beginnings of modern Western science were derived in part from the Arabs. The Arabs also introduced Europe to the Greek philosophers, whose writings they had already translated into Arabic. The emergence of the Seljuk Turks in the 11th cent. and of the Ottoman Turks in the 13th cent. ended the specifically Arab dominance in Islam, though Muslim culture still remained on the old Arab foundations.
The Arabs in the Twentieth Century
In the 20th cent., Arab leaders have attempted to form an Arab nation, which would unite the whole Arabic-speaking world from Morocco on the west, across the Middle East, to the borders of Iran and Turkey. Since 1945 most of the Arab nations have combined to form the Arab League, its purpose being to consider matters of common interest, such as policy regarding Israel and colonialism. With 22 member states in the Arab League by the mid-1990s, attempts to forge a unity among the Arabs have continued. Perhaps the most significant economic factor for the Arabs has been the discovery and development of the petroleum industry; two thirds of the world's oil reserves are thought to be in the Middle East. Since World War II a continual problem for the Arab states has been their relations with the Jewish state of Israel, created out of former Arab territory; hostility between them has resulted in four Arab-Israeli wars.
Bibliography
See J. B. Glubb, A Short History of the Arab Peoples (1969); P. K. Hitti, History of the Arabs (10th ed. 1970); M. Khadduri, Political Trends in the Arab World (1972); M. Mansoor, Political and Diplomatic History of the Arab World, 1900–67 (7 vol., 1972); Z. N. Zeine, The Emergence of Arab Nationalism (3d. ed. 1973); W. F. Abboushi, The Angry Arabs (1974); P. Mansfield, The Arabs (1979, rev. ed. 1985); A. S. Kantawi, Aesthetics and Ritual in the United Arab Emirates (1983); B. Pridham, ed., The Arab Gulf and the Arab World (1988); A. Hourani, A History of the Arab Peoples (1991).
A person who speaks Arabic as a first language and self-identifies as Arab.
Arabs comprise less than one-quarter of the world's 1.2 billion Muslims. Arabic is a Semitic language, as are Aramaic, Hebrew, Amharic, and some other languages. In its original Arabic meaning, an Arab is a pastoral nomad. Before the introduction of Islam in the seventh century C.E., Arabs participated in most ancient Near Eastern civilizations as traders, auxiliary warriors, and as providers of camels and other desert produce. They migrated with their extended kin and animals, following seasonal patterns of available water and vegetation, and made a sophisticated adaptation to arid environments. Poetry, their main artistic expression, presented their most strongly held beliefs and values: bravery in battle, patience in misfortune, persistence in revenge, protection of the weak, defiance toward the strong, hospitality to the guest, generosity to the needy, loyalty to the kin grouping, and fidelity in keeping promises. Most early Arabs were animists or ancestor-worshipers, but some adopted Judaism or Christianity before the advent of Islam.
Islam came to humanity through the last Messenger of God, Muhammad, an Arab of the Quraysh tribe (570 - 632 C.E.) who profoundly affected not only the Arabs but world history. Arab clans took part in the early conquests to extend Islamic rule into the Fertile Crescent and across North Africa as far west as Morocco and Spain (711 C.E.) and eastward to the borders of India and China. The Arabic language and the Islamic religion were widely adopted by non-Arab conquered peoples, some of whom intermarried with Arabs.
Politically, the term "Arab" has been applied to all citizens of states in which Arabic is now the official language, whether or not they are native Arabic speakers. These "Arab" states, listed from west to east in North Africa and the Middle East, include: Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, Sudan, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Iraq, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, and Oman. Culturally, the term has also been applied to persons of Arab descent living outside the Arab world.
Arab identity can mask linguistic and other ethnic identities in North Africa and the Middle East. Culturally and linguistically, Iranians (Farsi), Pakistanis (Urdu), and Afghanis (Pashtun) are not Arabs, although they employ Arabic script in writing their languages. The Turks, leaders of the Ottoman Empire since the fifteenth century, are not Arabs, and before the reforms of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk during the 1920s, they too wrote Turkish using Arabic calligraphy. The term "Arab" has also been used as a racial designation, in some cases used in racial profiling after 11 September 2001.
During the late 1800s Arab nationalism began to emerge in Beirut student societies. Some Arabs called for the restoration of Arab rule in the caliphate, as it was then claimed by the Ottoman sultans. In World War I, a family of Arabs (Hashimites) led by the Sharif of Mecca and Amir Husayn, a
Sayyid and descendant of Muhammad, revolted against Ottoman rule and freed parts of the Hijaz (Arabia), Palestine, and Syria. Aided by Britain, these Arabs hoped that they might form a united Arab state in the Arabian peninsula and the Fertile Crescent, but Britain honored other promises it had made to its allies (especially France) and to the Zionist movement. Husayn took but later lost control of the Hijaz; his son Faisal I ibn Hussein briefly ruled in Syria (until the French mandate took over in 1920) but was then made king of Iraq; another son, Abdallah, was given an emirate called Trans-jordan (now the Hashimite Kingdom of Jordan). In the peace settlement that ended World War I, Arabs in Syria and Lebanon were placed under a League of Nations mandate administered by France;
Britain held similar mandates in Palestine (initially including Transjordan) and Iraq. These mandates were intended to be temporary means for Arabs to govern themselves, but the winning of independence from European control between 1932 and 1946 did not facilitate Arab unification. Arab energies from 1900 to about 1950 were devoted mainly to achieving independence and to unifying the Arabic-speaking states. Continuing these efforts, the League of Arab States was created in 1945, with Egypt assuming a leadership role. In its first major test, the League failed to protect the Palestinians from the creation in 1948 of the state of Israel.
"Arab Nationalism" is a term used by anticolonial, nationalist leaders throughout the Middle East, especially recognized when Gamal Abdel Nasser, the first postindependence leader of Egypt, nationalized the Suez Canal and succeeded in gaining Egyptian control over the canal despite imperial pressure from Britain and France, allied with Israel. Generally political efforts at Arab union and federations have not succeeded, but inter-Arab pacts to create customs and telecommunications unions have been implemented. Arab success in imposing an oil embargo on the United States during and after the October 1973 war with Israel raised hopes for Arab unity. However, Egypt's separate peace with Israel in 1979; the division of Arab countries over the Lebanese Civil War (1975 - 1990); the Iran - Iraq War (1980 - 1988); Iraq's invasion of Kuwait (Gulf Crisis, 1990 - 1991); and two Gulf wars all pointed to deep-seated divisions among Arab governments and peoples. Petroleum revenues have enriched some Arab regimes, but on the whole the Arab people have not prospered. In the second American war against Iraq in 2003, Arab nationalism was revived in the widespread response of the Arab world to what was described as an "invasion" and "occupation" of Arab territory. New Arab television networks, such as al-Jazeera and al-Arabiyya, have facilitated this revived solidarity.
Historically, appeals to the Arab Nation have come from Palestinian nationalists, whose lack of a territorial base makes Arab nationalism a matter of essential politics. The juxtaposition of "Arab" and "Israeli" in the usually hyphenated "Arab - Israeli conflict" adds to the sense of the Arabs being constituted as a single nation.
Arab nationalism has been a secular movement, with religion either irrelevant or kept separate from politics. Although people may still respond emotionally to the call for Arab unity, the political dynamic is shifting away from Arab nationalism to political alternatives framed by Islamic discourse, generally referred to as "Islamist," meaning the political use of the Islamic faith.
If Arabs have been deeply frustrated by their failure to unite, they still take pride in their historical achievements, their culture, notably their language and literature, their role in the development and spread of Islam, and their keen family loyalty, generosity, and hospitality.
Bibliography
Fluehr-Lobban, Carolyn. Islamic Society in Practice, 2d edition. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2004.
Goldschmidt, Arthur, Jr. A Concise History of the Middle East, 4th edition. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1991.
Hitti, Philip K. History of the Arabs: From the Earliest Times to the Present, revised 10th edition. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002.
Hourani, Albert. History of the Arab Peoples. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University, 2002.
Ibrahim, Saad Eddin, and Hopkins, Nicholas S., eds. Arab Society: Social Science Perspectives. Cairo: American University in Cairo Press, 1985.
Musallam, Basim. The Arabs: A Living History. London: Collins/Harvill, 1983.
Nydell, Margaret K. (Omar). Understanding Arabs: A Guide for Westerners, 3d edition. Yarmouth, ME: Intercultural Press, 2002.
Polk, William R. The Arab World Today, 5th edition. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1991.
— ARTHUR GOLDSCHMIDT UPDATED BY CAROLYN FLUEHR-LOBBAN
The heyday of occultism, especially astrology and alchemy, occurred among the Arab race at the time when the Moors established their empire in the Spanish peninsula. In the eighth century an Arabian mystic revived the dreams and speculations of the alchemists and discovered some important secrets. Geber, who flourished about 720-750, is reputed to have written upwards of five hundred works on the Philosophers' Stone and the elixir of life. His researches in these occult subjects proved fruitless, but though the secrets of immortal life and boundless wealth eluded him, he discovered silver nitrate, corrosive sublimate, red oxide of mercury, and nitric acid, for he was a brilliant chemist.
His tenets included a belief that a preparation of gold would heal all diseases in animals and plants, as well as in human beings; that the metals were affected with maladies, except the pure, supreme, and precious gold; and that the Philosophers' Stone had often been discovered, but its fortunate discoverers would not reveal the secret to blind, incredulous, and unworthy man.
Geber's Summa Perfectionis, a manual for the alchemical student, has been frequently translated. One English version, of which there is a copy in the library of the British Museum, London, was published by an English enthusiast, Richard Russell, at "the Star, in New Market, in Wapping, near the Dock," in 1686. Geber's true name was Abou Moussah Djafar, to which was added Al Sofi, or "The Wise," and he was a native of Houran in Mesopotamia. He was followed by Avicenna, Averroes, and others equally gifted and fortunate.
According to Geber and his successors, the metals were not only compound creatures, but they were also all composed of the same two substances. By the nineteenth century, European chemists like William Prout and Humphry Davy were propounding similar ideas. "The improvements," stated Davy, "taking place in the methods of examining bodies, are constantly changing the opinions of chemists with respect to their nature, and there is no reason to suppose that any real indestructible principle has yet been discovered. Matter may ultimately be found to be the same in essence, differing only in the arrangement of its particles; or two or three simple substances may produce all the varieties of compound bodies." The ancient ideas, of Demetrius the Greek physicist and of Geber the Arabian polypharmist are still hovering about the horizon of chemistry. In the twentieth century, successful nuclear fission has validated the transmutation of metals.
The Arabians also taught that the metals are composed of mercury and sulphur in different proportions. They toiled away at making many medicines out of the various mixtures and reactions from the few available chemicals. They believed in transmutation, but they did not strive to effect it. It belonged to their creed rather than to their practice. They were hardworking scientific artisans with their pestles and mortars, their crucibles and furnaces, their alembics and aludels, their vessels for infusion, for decoration, for cohobation, sublimation, fixation, lixiviation, filtration, and coagulation. They believed in transmutation, in the first matter, and in the correspondence of the metals with the planets, to say nothing of potable gold. It is not known where the ancient Arabians derived the sublimer articles of their scientific faith. Perhaps they were the conjectures of their ancestors according to the faith. Perhaps they had them from the Fatimites of Northern Africa, among whose local predecessors it has been seen that it is just possible the doctrine of the four elements and their mutual convertibility may have arisen. Perhaps they drew them from Greece, modifying and adapting them to their own specific forms of matter, mercury, sulphur, and arsenic.
Arabian Astrology
Astrology was also employed by the oracles of Spain. Al-Battani was celebrated for his astronomical science, as were many others; and in geometry, arithmetic, algebraical calculations, and the theory of music, the list of Asiatic and Spanish practitioners is long, but only known by their lives and principal writings. The works of Ptolemy also exercised the ingenuity of the Arabians. But judicial astrology, or the art of foretelling future events from the position and influences of the stars, was a favorite pursuit; and many of their philosophers dedicated all their labors to this futile but lucrative inquiry. They often spoke highly of the iatro-mathematical discipline, which could control the disorders to which man was subject and regulate the events of life.
The tenets of Islam, which inculcate an unreserved submission to the overruling destinies of heaven, are evidently adverse to the lessons of astrology; but this by no means hindered the practitioners of old Spain and Arabia from attaining a high standard of perfection in the art, which they perhaps first learned from the peoples of Chaldea, the past masters of the ancient world in astronomical science, in divination, and the secrets of prophecy. But in Arab Spain, where the tenets of Islam were perhaps more lightly esteemed than in their original home, magic unquestionably reached a higher if not more thoughtful standard.
From the Greeks, still in search of science, the Arabs turned their attention to the books of the sages who are esteemed the primitive instructors of mankind, among whom Hermes was deemed the first. They mention the works written by him, or rather by them, as they suppose, like other authors, that there were three of the name. To one the imposing appellation of "Trismegistus" has been given, and the Arabians, presumably from some ancient records, minutely described his character and person. Illustrating their astrological discipline, they also published some writings ascribed to the Persian Zoroaster.
Sources:
Hutin, Serge. A History of Alchemy. New York: Walker, 1963. Reprint, New York: Tower Books, n.d.
Jabir ibn Hayyan. The Works of Geber. London: Printed for William Cooper, 1686.
Muhammad ibn Umail al-Tamini. Three Arabic Treatises on Alchemy. Calcutta: Asiatic Society of Bengal, 1933.
The purest bred breed of horses and one of great antiquity. A small (14 to 15 hands high, or 55–60 inches at the wither) riding horse, usually bay, chestnut, white or fleabitten gray in color. It has been extensively used in the production of other breeds and crossbreds. It and its crossbreds are noted for the presence amongst them of cerebellar dysplasia, combined immunodeficiency and leukoderma. Called also the Arabian horse.
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| Arabs العرب |
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| Arab family from Ramallah, 1905. | ||||
| Total population | ||||
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approx. 300 to 340 million[citation needed] |
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| Regions with significant populations | ||||
Populations in Arabic-speaking regions
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| Language(s) | ||||
| Arabic | ||||
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| Islam, Christianity, Druzism and Judaism |
An Arab (Arabic: عربي, arabi) is a member of a complexly defined ethnic group who identifies as such on the basis of one or more of either genealogical, political, or linguistic grounds.
The Arabic language and culture began to spread in the Middle East in the 2nd century with genealogically Arab Christians such as the Ghassanids, Lakhmids and Banu Judham.[1][2][3] The Arabic language gained importance with rise of Islam in the 7th century AD as the language of the Qur'an, which spread the Arabic language with the early Islamic expansion.[4]
The definition of an Arab is defined independently of religious identity, and pre-dates the rise of Islam, with historically attested Arab Christian kingdoms and Arab Jewish tribes. The earliest documented use of the word "Arab" as defining a group of people dates from the 9th century BC. [1] Islamized but non-Arabized peoples, and therefore the majority of the world's Muslims, do not form part of the Arab World, but comprise what is the geographically larger and diverse Muslim World.
In the modern era, defining who is an Arab is done on the grounds of one or more of the following three criteria:
The relative importance of these three factors is estimated differently by different groups and frequently disputed. Some combine aspects of each definition, as done by Habib Hassan Touma,[7] who defines an Arab "in the modern sense of the word", as "one who is a national of an Arab state, has command of the Arabic language, and possesses a fundamental knowledge of Arab tradition, that is, of the manners, customs, and political and social systems of the culture." Most people who consider themselves Arab do so based on the overlap of the political and linguistic definitions.
Few people consider themselves Arab based on the political definition without the linguistic one; thus few Kurds and Berbers identify as Arab. But some do, for instance some Berbers also consider themselves Arab (v. e.g. Gellner, Ernest and Micaud, Charles, Eds. Arabs and Berbers: from tribe to nation in North Africa. Lexington: Lexington Books, 1972). Some religious minorities within the Middle East and North Africa who have Arabic or any of its varieties as their primary community language, such as Egyptian Copts, may not identify as Arabs.
The Arab League at its formation in 1946 defined Arab as "a person whose language is Arabic, who lives in an Arabic speaking country, who is in sympathy with the aspirations of the Arabic speaking peoples".
The relation of ʿarab and ʾaʿrāb is complicated further by the notion of "lost Arabs" al-ʿArab al-ba'ida mentioned in the Qur'an as punished for their disbelief. All contemporary Arabs were considered as descended from two ancestors, Qahtan and Adnan.
Versteegh (1997) is uncertain whether to ascribe this distinction to the memory of a real difference of origin of the two groups, but it is certain that the difference was strongly felt in early Islamic times. Even in Islamic Spain there was enmity between the Qays of the northern and the Kalb of the southern group. The so-called Himyarite language described by Al-Hamdani (died 946) appears to be a special case of language contact between the two groups, an originally north Arabic dialect spoken in the south, and influenced by Old South Arabic.
During the Muslim conquests of the seventh and
eighth centuries, the Arabs forged an Arab Empire
(under the Rashidun and Umayyads, and later the
Abbasids) whose borders touched southern France in the west,
China in the east, Asia Minor in the north, and the
Sudan in the south. This was one of the largest land empires in
history. In much of this area, the Arabs spread Islam and the Arabic language (the
language of the Qur'an) through
Early Semites built civilizations in Mesopotamia and Syria, but slowly lost their political domination of the Near East due to internal turmoil and constant attacks by new nomadic Semitic and non-Semitic groups. The Arameans, Akkadians, Assyrians, Canaanites, Babylonians, Phoenicians, Philistines, Amorites, Sabaeans and Minaeans spoke closely related Semitic languages. These groups often overlapped and mixed racial lines, as did Indo-European groups.[8] Attacks climaxed with the arrival of the Medians to east Mesopotamia and the incorporation of the Neo Babylonians. Although the Semites lost political control, the Aramaic language remained the lingua Franca of Mesopotamia and Syria. Eventually, Aramaic lost its day-to-day use with the defeat of the Persians and the arrival of the Hellenic armies around 330BC.
The Hebrew Bible occasionally refers to `Arvi 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. Its earliest attested use referring to the neighboring nomadic groups. Proto-Arabic, or ancient north Arabian, texts give a clearer picture of the Arabs' emergence. The earliest are written in variants of epigraphic south Arabian musnad script, including the 8th century BC Hasaean inscriptions of eastern Saudi Arabia, the 6th century BC Lihyanite texts of southeastern Saudi Arabia and the Thamudic texts found throughout Arabia and the Sinai (not in reality connected with Thamud).
The Nabateans moved into territory vacated by the Edomites -- Semites who settled the region centuries before them. The Nabateans were nomadic newcomers who wrote in a vernacular Aramiac that evolved into modern Arabic and modern Arabic script around the 4th century. This process included Safaitic inscriptions (beginning in the 1st century BC) and the many Arabic personal names in Nabataean inscriptions in Aramaic. From about the 2nd century BC, a few inscriptions from Qaryat al-Faw (near Sulayyil) reveal a dialect which is no longer considered "proto-Arabic", but pre-classical Arabic.
In Sassanid times, Arabia Petraea was a border province between the Roman and Persian empires, and from the early centuries AD was increasingly affected by South Arabian influence, notably with the Ghassanids migrating north from the 3rd century.
The Ghassanids,Lakhmids and Kindites were the last major migration of non-muslims out of Yemen to the north.
Greeks and Romans referred to all the nomadic population of the desert in the Near East as Arabi. The Greeks called Yemen "Arabia Felix". [2], The Romans called the vassal nomadic states within the Roman Empire "Arabia Petraea" after the city of Petra, and called unconquered deserts bordering the empire to the south and east Arabia Magna. [3]
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 Qur'an does not use the word ʿarab, only the nisba adjective ʿarabiyyun. The Qur'an calls itself ʿarabiyyun, "Arabic", and mubinun, "clear". The two qualities are connected for example in ayat 43.2-3, "By the clear Book: We have made it an Arabic recitation in order that you may understand". The Qur'an became regarded as the prime example of the al-ʿarabiyya, the language of the Arabs. The term ʾiʿrāb has the same root and refers to a particularly clear and correct mode of speech. The plural noun ʾaʿrāb refers to the Bedouin tribes of the desert who resisted Muhammad, for example in ayat 9.97, ʾaʿrābu ʾašaddu kufrān wa nifāqān "the Bedouin are the worst in disbelief and hypocrisy".
Based on this, in early Islamic terminology, ʿarab referred to the language, and ʾaʿrāb to the Arab Bedouins, carrying a negative connotation due to the Qur'anic verdict just cited. But after the Islamic conquest of the 8th century, the language of the nomadic Arabs became regarded as the most pure by the grammarians following Abi Ishaq, and the term kalam al-ʿArab, "language of the Arabs", denoted the uncontaminated language of the Bedouins.
The arrival of Islam united the Arab tribes, who flooded into the strongly Semitic Greater Syria and Iraq. Within years, the major garrison towns developed into the major cities of Syria and Iraq. The local population, which shared a close linguistic and genetic ancestry with Qahtani and Adnani Muslims were quickly Arabized.
The Phoenicians and later the Carthaginians dominated North African and Iberian shores for more than 8 centuries until they were suppressed by the Romans and the later Vandal invasion. Inland, the nomadic Berbers allied with Arab Muslims in invading Spain. The Arab tribes mainly settled the old Phoenician and Carthagenian towns, while the Berbers remained dominant inland. Inland north Africa remained partly Arabized until the 11th century, whereas the Iberian Peninsula, particularly its southern part, remained heavily Arabized, until the expulsion of the Moriscos in the 17th Century.
Ibn Khaldun's Muqaddima distinguishes between sedentary Muslims who used be nomadic Arabs and the 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 Egyptians, Spaniards and Yemenis. [4] The Christians of Italy and the Crusaders preferred the term Saraceans for all the Arabs and Muslims of that time. [5] The Christians of Iberia used the term Moor to describe all the Arabs and Muslims of that time. [6]
Most Arabs of Central Asia are fully assimilated with local populations, and call themselves the same as locals (e.g.
The Banu Hilal was an Arabian tribal confederation, organized by the Fatimids. They struck in Libya, reducing the Zenata Berbers (a clan that claimed Yemeni ancestry from pre-Islamic periods) and small coastal towns, and Arabizing the Sanhaja berber confederation. The Banu Hilal eventually Settled modern (Morocco and Algeria) and subdued Arabized the Sanhaja by the time of Ibn Khaldun.
The Banu Sulyam is another Bedouin tribal confederation from Nejd which followed through the trials of Banu Hilal and helped them defeat the Zirids in the Battle of Gabis in 1052AD, and finally took Kairuan in 1057Ad. The Banu Sulaym mainly settled and completely Arabized Libya.
A branch of the Rabi'ah tribe settled in north Sudan and slowly Arabized the Makurian kingdom in modern Sudan until 1315 AD when the Banu Kanz inherited the kingdom of Makuria and paved the way for the Arabization of the Sudan, that was completed by the arrival of the Jaali and Juhayna Arab tribes.
The Banu Maqil is a Yemeni nomadic tribe that settled in Tunisia in the 13th century. The Banu Hassan a Maqil branch moved into the Sanhaja region in whats today the Western Sahara and Mauritania, they fought a thirty years war on the side of the Lamtuna Arabized Berbers who claimed Himyarite ancestry (from the early Islamic invasions) defeating the Sanhaja berbers and Arabizing Mauritania.
Medieval Arab genealogists divided Arabs into three groups:
The Arabic language spoken today in classical Quranic form evolved as a mix between the original Arabic of Qahtan and northern Arabic which shares a great deal with northern Semitic languages from the Levant.
Arab Muslims are Shi'a, Sunni or Ibadhite. The Druze faith is usually considered separate.[dubious ] The self-identified Arab Christians generally follow Eastern Churches such as the Greek Orthodox and Greek Catholic churches.
Before the coming of Islam, most Arabs followed a religion with a number of deities, including Hubal, Wadd, Allāt, Manat, and Uzza. Some tribes had converted to Christianity or Judaism. A few individuals, the hanifs, had apparently rejected polytheism in favor of a vague monotheism. The most prominent Arab Christian kingdoms were the Ghassanid and Lakhmid kingdoms. When Himyarite kings converted to Judaism in the late 4th century, the elites of the other prominent Arab kingdom, the Kindites, being Himyirite vassals, apparently also converted (at least partly). With the expansion of Islam, most Arabs rapidly became Muslim, and polytheistic traditions disappeared.
Today, Sunni Islam dominates in most areas, overwhelmingly so in North Africa. Shia Islam is dominant in Iraq, Bahrain, Kuwait, eastern Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, northern Syria, the al-Batinah region in Oman and northern Yemen. The tiny Druze community follow a secretive faith particularly similar to Shia Islam, and are also Arab.
Estimates of the number of Arab Christians vary, and depend on the definition of
"Arab", as with the number of all Arabs, especially Muslim Arabs. Christians make up 9.2% of the population of the Near
East.[11] In Lebanon they number about 39% of the
population,[12] in Syria 10%.[13] In Palestine before the creation of
Israel estimates ranged as high as 20%, but is now 3.8% due to mass emigration[citation needed]. In Israel Arab Christians constitute 2.1% (roughly 10% of the
Jews from Arab countries – mainly Mizrahi Jews and Yemenite Jews – are today usually not categorised as Arab. Sociologist Philip Mendes asserts that before the anti-Jewish actions of the 1930s and 1940s, overall Iraqi Jews "viewed themselves as Arabs of the Jewish faith, rather than as a separate race or nationality".[14] Prior to the emergence of the term Mizrahi, the term "Arab Jews" (Yehudim ‘Áravim, יהודים ערבים) was sometimes used to describe Jews of the Arab world. The term is rarely used today. The few remaining Jews in the Arab countries reside mostly in Morocco and Tunisia. From the late 1940s to the early 1960s, following the creation of the state of Israel, most of these Jews left or were expelled from their countries of birth and are now mostly concentrated in Israel. Some immigrated to France, where they form the largest Jewish community, outnumbering European Jews, but relatively few to the United States. See Jewish exodus from Arab lands.
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