Arabs

The Arabs are a people of West Asia and North Africa whose shared bond is above all the Arabic language. In ancient times the name referred to the Semitic-speaking inhabitants, nomadic and settled, of the Syrian Desert and the Arabian Peninsula. After the rise of Islam and the Arab conquests of the seventh century, Arabic spread across a vast area, and today some 366 to 400 million people in the Arab countries are counted as Arabs.

The first known written mention of Arabs as a people comes from Assyria. The Kurkh Monoliths, which record the Battle of Qarqar (853 BCE), mention Arabs of the desert under a king named Gindibu, who joined a coalition fighting the Assyrians. Over the following centuries Assyrian and Babylonian inscriptions refer to Arabs across the desert fringes of the Fertile Crescent, and Greek writers from Herodotus onward describe Arabs in the Sinai, southern Palestine, Mesopotamia and the incense lands of the south. Arab, Jewish and Islamic tradition traces the Arabs' descent from Abraham through his son Ishmael.

Ancient Arabia was rich through trade. The Qedarites, a mostly nomadic confederation of the Syrian Desert, profited from the caravans linking Arabia with the Mediterranean, while in the south the kingdoms of Saba, Qataban, Hadhramaut, Ma'in and later Himyar grew wealthy on frankincense and myrrh, though their peoples spoke South Arabian rather than Arabic. In the north the Nabataeans, with their capital at Petra, moved from Aramaic to Arabic, and their alphabet developed into the Arabic script around the fourth century CE. In late antiquity Arab dynasties such as the Ghassanids, allied with Byzantium, and the Lakhmids, allied with Persia, dominated the desert frontier, and many Arabs became Christians. An inscription of 328 CE calls the ruler Imru' al-Qays "king of all the Arabs", the oldest surviving sign of a shared Arab identity.

In the early seventh century Islam, founded by the Prophet Muhammad, brought the Arab tribes into a new and far larger union. After Muhammad's death in 632 the Rashidun Caliphate conquered Syria, Iraq and Egypt. The Umayyad Caliphate, ruling from Damascus from 661, extended Arab rule across North Africa into Spain, and in 686 Caliph Abd al-Malik made Arabic the official language of government. The Abbasids overthrew the Umayyads in 750 and founded Baghdad as their capital in 762, presiding over a flowering of science, medicine and philosophy, while the Umayyads in al-Andalus and the Fatimids in Cairo created rival centres of learning.

The Mongols sacked Baghdad in 1258, and in 1517 the Ottomans conquered the Mamluk sultanate, taking the Levant and Egypt. In the late nineteenth century a cultural revival, the Nahda, encouraged Arab nationalism. In 1916, during the First World War, Sharif Hussein bin Ali launched the Arab Revolt against the Ottomans, hoping for a united Arab kingdom. The war instead ended with most Arab provinces divided between Britain and France under the Sykes–Picot arrangements, while the Hejaz gained independence.

Independent Arab states emerged during the twentieth century, and the Arab League was founded on 22 March 1945. Pan-Arab movements, championed by Egypt's Gamal Abdel Nasser, inspired short-lived unions such as the United Arab Republic of Egypt and Syria (1958–1961). The Arab–Israeli conflict, revolutions and, from 2010, the uprisings of the Arab Spring have shaped the region since.

Arab identity rests on language, culture and history rather than religion. About 93 per cent of Arabs are Muslims, mostly Sunni with Shia minorities and Ibadis in Oman, and Arab Christians, Druze and Baháʼís form important communities; historically there were also many Arab Jews. Arabic, in its classical, modern standard and many spoken forms, is one of the six official languages of the United Nations. The diaspora, reportedly about 30 million people, lives mainly in the Americas, Europe, Africa and Australia.

Our 200 BCE, 1492 and 1500 maps use the label "Arabs" for a broad, approximate area of the Arabian interior, mostly in today's Saudi Arabia and Oman. The desert nomads also have their own page, the Bedouin.