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Arab world

April 21, 2023

The Arab world (Arabic: اَلْعَالَمُ الْعَرَبِيُّ al-ʿālam al-ʿarabī), formally the Arab homeland (اَلْوَطَنُ الْعَرَبِيُّ al-waṭan al-ʿarabī),[7][8][9] also known as the Arab nation (اَلْأُمَّةُ الْعَرَبِيَّةُ al-ummah al-ʿarabīyyah), the Arabsphere, or the Arab states,[10] refers to a vast group of countries, mainly located in Western Asia and Northern Africa. A majority of people in these countries are ethnically Arab,[11][12] followed by Berbers, Kurds, Turkmens, Assyrians and Armenians.[13] Arabic language, which is used as the lingua franca throughout the Arab world.[14][15][16][17][18][19]

Arab world
Area13,132,327 km2 (5,070,420 sq mi)[1]
Population456,520,777[2]
Population density29.839/km2 (70.37/sq mi)[3]
GDP (nominal)$2.782 trillion[4]
GDP per capita$6,647[5]
DemonymArab
Countries
DependenciesArab League[6]
Time zonesUTC±00:00 to UTC+04:00
Internet TLD.africa, .asia
Largest citiesMajor cities of Arab world
List

The Arab world is at its minimum defined as the 18 states where Arabic is natively spoken.[20][21] At its maximum it consists of the 22 members of the Arab League, an international organization,[6] which on top of the 18 states also includes the Comoros, Djibouti, Somalia and the partially recognized state of Palestine. 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.[6] The eastern part of the Arab world is known as the Mashriq, and the western part as the Maghreb.

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.[2] The region is nevertheless diverse in many ways, and economically includes some of the wealthiest as well as poorest populations.[21] The region mostly corresponds with the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) definition.

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.[22][23]

Terminology

In page 9 of "Best Divisions for Knowledge of the Regions", 10th Century Arab Geographer Al Maqdisi used the term Arab regions (Arabic: أَقَالِيمُ ٱلْعَرَبِ) 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, Turkey), Egypt, and the Maghreb (Algeria, Libya, Mauritania, Morocco, Tunisia, Western Sahara Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic), to be part of the Arab regions.[24]

Malta, an island country in Southern Europe whose national language also derives from Arabic (through Sicilian Arabic), is not included in the region. 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 (الدَّارِجَة "everyday/colloquial language"[25]) in the Maghreb or Aammiyya (ٱلْعَامِيَّة "common language") in the Mashreq. The majority of the vocabulary in these vernaculars is shared with Standard Arabic, but they also significantly borrow from other languages, such as Berber, French, Spanish and Italian in the Maghreb.[26]

Standard territorial

Main article: Arab League

Although no globally accepted definition of the Arab world exists,[6] all countries that are members of the Arab League are generally acknowledged as being part of the Arab world.[6][27]

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:

An Arab is a person whose language is Arabic, who lives in an Arabic country, and who is in sympathy with the aspirations of the Arabic people.[28]

This standard territorial definition is sometimes seen to be inappropriate[29] or problematic,[30] and may be supplemented with certain additional elements (see ancillary linguistic definition below).[31]

Member states of the Arab League

Main article: Member states of the Arab League

Ancillary linguistic

Main article: Arabic language

As an alternative to,[32] or in combination with,[6] 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,[33] or those states or territories in which the majority of the population speaks Arabic, and thus may also include populations of the Arab diaspora.[6]

When an ancillary linguistic definition is used in combination with the standard territorial definition, various parameters may be applied[clarification needed] to determine whether a state or territory should be included in this alternative definition of the Arab world. These parameters may be applied[clarification needed] 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 has two official languages, Arabic and Somali, while Somaliland has three, Arabic, Somali and English.[34] Both Arabic and Somali belong to the larger Afro-Asiatic language family. Although Arabic is widely spoken by many people in the north and urban areas in the south, Somali is the most widely used language, and contains many Arabic loan words.[35]

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.[36]

The Comoros has three official languages: Arabic, Comorian and French. Comorian is the most widely spoken language, with Arabic having a religious significance, and French being associated with the educational system.

Chad, Eritrea[37] 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,[31][38] Arab citizens of Israel may concurrently be considered a constituent part of the Arab world.

Iran has about 1.5 million Arabic speakers.[39] 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.[40] 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.

Arab League states

Country Area (Rank) Area
(km2)[Note 1]		 Area
(sq mi) 		Area
(% of total) 		Area
(Notes) 		Population
(2021)[41][42]		 Population
(World rank) 		Density
(rank) 		Density
(/km2) 		Density
(/sq mi)
Algeria 1 2,381,741 919,595 18.1% Largest country in Africa and in the Arab world. 44,177,969 34 17 16 41
Bahrain 22 758 293 0.005% 1,463,265 155 1 1,646 4,263
Comoros 21 2,235 863 0.01% 821,625 163 4 309 800
Djibouti 16 23,200 9,000 0.1% 1,105,557 159 15 37 96
Egypt 6 1,002,000 387,000 7.6% Excluding the Hala'ib Triangle (20,580 km2/7,950 sq mi). 109,262,178 16 9 107 277
Iraq 10 435,244 168,049 3.3% 43,533,592 40 12 70 181
Jordan 14 89,342 34,495 0.7% 11,148,278 106 11 71 184
Kuwait 17 17,818 6,880 0.1% 4,250,114 134 5 200 518
Lebanon 19 10,452 4,036 0.08% 5,592,631 125 3 404 1,046
Libya 4 1,759,540 679,360 11.4% 6,735,277 103 21 3.6 9.3
Mauritania 5 1,025,520 395,960 7.8% 4,614,974 138 22 3.2 8.3
Morocco 9 446,550 172,410 3.3% Including Western Sahara (266,000 km2/103,000 sq mi). 37,076,584 35 10 83 215
Oman 11 309,500 119,500 2.4% 4,520,471 139 20 9.2 24
Palestine 20 6,220 2,400 0.05% 5,133,392 126 2 687 1,779
Qatar 18 11,586 4,473 0.08% 2,688,235 149 6 154 399
Saudi Arabia 2 2,149,690 830,000 16.4% Largest country in Western Asia. 35,950,396 45 19 13 34
Somalia 7 637,657 246,201 5.0% Longest coastline in Africa and the Arab League. 17,065,581 80 18 14 36
Sudan 3 1,861,484 718,723 14.2% Formerly the largest country in Africa. 45,657,202 39 16 16 41
Syria 12 185,180 71,500 1.4% Includes parts of Golan Heights (1,200 km2/460 sq mi). 21,324,367 55 7 118 306
Tunisia 13 163,610 63,170 1.2% 12,262,946 77 13 65 168
United Arab Emirates 15 83,600 32,300 0.6% 9,365,145 93 8 99 256
Yemen 8 527,968 203,850 4.0% 32,981,641 49 14 45 117
Arab League total 13,130,695 5,069,790 406,691,829

Demographics

Main article: Demographics of the Arab world

In the Arab world, Modern Standard Arabic, derived from Classical Arabic (symptomatic of Arabic diglossia), serves as an official language in the Arab League states, and Arabic dialects are used as lingua franca. Various indigenous languages are also spoken, which predate the spread of the Arabic language. This contrasts with the situation in the wider Islamic world, where, in contiguous Iran, Pakistan and Afghanistan, the Perso-Arabic script is used and Arabic is the primary liturgical language, but the tongue is not official at the state level or spoken as a vernacular. Arabs constitute around one quarter of the 1.5 billion Muslims in the Islamic world.[43]

Religion

The majority of people in the Arab world adhere to Islam, and the religion has official status in most countries. Shariah law exists partially in the legal system in some countries (especially in the Arabian peninsula), while others are legislatively secular. The majority of the Arab countries adhere to Sunni Islam. Iraq and Bahrain, however, are Shia majority countries, while Lebanon, Yemen, and Kuwait have large Shia minorities. In Saudi Arabia, Ismailite pockets are also found in the eastern Al-Hasa region and the southern city of Najran. Ibadi Islam is practiced in Oman, where Ibadis constitute around 75% of Muslims.

There are also Christian adherents in the Arab world, particularly in Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Jordan, and Palestine. Small native Christian communities can be found also throughout the Arabian Peninsula and North Africa.[44] Coptic, Maronite and Assyrian Christian enclaves exist in the Nile Valley, Levant and northern Iraq respectively. There are also Assyrian, Armenian, Syriac-Aramean and Arab Christians throughout Iraq, Syria, Palestine, Lebanon and Jordan. There are also native Arab Christian communities in Algeria,[45] Bahrain,[46] Morocco,[47][48] Kuwait[49] and Tunisia.[50]

Smaller ethno-religious minorities across the Arab League include the Yezidis, Yarsan and Shabaks (mainly in Iraq), the Druzes (mainly in Syria and also in Lebanon, Jordan)[51] and Mandaeans (in Iraq). Formerly, there were significant minorities of Jews throughout the Arab World. However, the Arab–Israeli conflict prompted their mass exodus between 1948 and 1972. Today small Jewish communities remain, ranging anywhere from just 10 in Bahrain, to more than 1,000 in Tunisia and some 3,000 in Morocco. Historically, slavery in the Muslim world developed out of pre-Islamic practices of slavery in the Arab world.[52][53]

Education

Main article: Higher Education in the Arab World

According to UNESCO, the average rate of adult literacy (ages 15 and older) in this region is 76.9%. In Mauritania and Yemen, the rate is lower than the average, at barely over 50%. Syria, Lebanon, Palestine and Jordan record a high adult literacy rate of over 90%.[citation needed] The average rate of adult literacy shows steady improvement, and the absolute number of adult illiterates fell from 64 million to around 58 million between 1990 and 2000–2004. Overall, the gender disparity in adult literacy is high in this region, and of the illiteracy rate, women account for two-thirds, with only 69 literate women for every 100 literate men. The average GPI (Gender Parity Index) for adult literacy is 0.72, and gender disparity can be observed in Egypt, Morocco, and Yemen. Above all, the GPI of Yemen is only 0.46 in a 53% adult literacy rate.[54]

Literacy rate is higher among the youth than adults. Youth literacy rate (ages 15–24) in the Arab region increased from 63.9 to 76.3% from 1990 to 2002. The average rate of GCC States *

Cooperation Council for the Arab States of the Gulf (GCC) was 94%, followed by the Maghreb at 83.2% and the Mashriq at 73.6%.

The United Nations published an Arab human development report in 2002, 2003 and 2004. These reports, written by researchers from the Arab world, address some sensitive issues in the development of Arab countries: women empowerment, availability of education and information among others.

Film industry

There is no single description of Arab cinema since it includes films from various countries and cultures of the Arab world and therefore does not have one form, structure, or style.[55] In its inception, Arab cinema was mostly an imitation of Western Cinema. However; it has and continues to constantly change and evolve[55]. Arab Cinema is a constantly changing and evolving industry.[55] It mostly includes films made in Egypt, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Kuwait, Algeria, Morocco, and Tunisia.[55] However, Egypt is a pioneer among Arab countries in the field of cinema[56]. Each country in the region has its own unique characteristics and identifiable brand of cinema.[55]

 
Salah Zulfikar and Faten Hamama in the premiere of Bain Al-Atlal ("Among the Ruins") in Cairo, 1959

Elsewhere in North Africa and the Middle East, film production was scarce until the late 1960s and early 1970s when filmmakers began to receive funding and financial assistance from state organizations.[55] This was during the post-independence and is when most Arab cinema took root.[57] Most films produced at that time were funded by the state and contained a nationalistic dimension. These films helped to advance certain social causes such as independence, and other social, economic and political agendas.[57]

A sustained film industry was able to emerge in Egypt when other parts of the Arab world had only been able to sporadically produce feature-length films due to limited financing.[55]

Arabic cinema is dominated by films from Egypt. Three quarters of all Arab movies are produced in Egypt. According to film critic and historian Roy Armes, the Cinema of Lebanon is the only other cinema in the Arabic-speaking region, beside Egypt's, that could amount to a national cinema.[58]

While Egyptian and Lebanese cinema have a long history of production, most other Arab countries did not witness film production until after independence, and even today, the majority of film production in countries like Bahrain, Libya, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, and the United Arab Emirates is limited to television or short films.[59]

There is increased interest in films originating in the Arab world. For example, films from Algeria, Lebanon, Morocco, Palestine, Syria and Tunisia are making wider and more frequent rounds than ever before in local film festivals and repertoire theaters.[60]

Arab cinema has explored many topics from politics, colonialism, tradition, modernity and social taboos.[61] It has also attempted to escape from its earlier tendency to mimic and rely on Western film devices.[61] In fact, colonization did not only influence Arab films, but it also had an impact on Arab movies theaters.[62] Apart from the history of Arab cinema, recently the portrayal of women became an important aspect in the production of Arab cinema. Arab woman shaped a great portion of the film industry in the Arab world by employing their cinematic talents in improving the production of Arab films.[62]

However, the production of Arab cinema has declined in the last decades and many filmmakers in the Middle East gathered to hold a meeting and discuss the current state of Arab cinema.[63]

Gender equality and women's rights

Women in the Arab world are still denied equality of opportunity, although their disenfranchisement is a critical factor crippling the Arab nations' quest to return to the first rank of global leaders in commerce, learning and culture, according to a United Nations-sponsored report in 2008.[64]

Child marriages

According to the United Nations, 14% of Arab girls are married by the age of 18.[65]

Violence

Rapists are often treated leniently or acquitted in the Arab region if they marry their victims. 37% of Arab women experienced violence in their lifetime but the numbers may be higher according to indicators. In some countries, the share of women experiencing violence and abuse by intimate partner reaches 70%.[65]

Largest cities

Main article: List of largest cities in the Arab world

Table of largest cities in the Arab world by official city propers:[66]

Rank Country City Population Founding date Image
1 Egypt Cairo 16,225,000 969 AD  
2 Iraq Baghdad 7,960,000 762 AD  
3 Saudi Arabia Riyadh 6,030,000 100–200 AD  
4 Sudan Khartoum 5,345,000 1821 AD  
5 Jordan Amman 4,995,000 7250 BC  
6 Egypt Alexandria 4,870,000 331 BC  
7 Kuwait Kuwait City 4,660,000 1613 AD  
8 Morocco Casablanca 4,370,000 768 AD  
9 Saudi Arabia Jeddah 3,875,000 600 BC  
10 United Arab Emirates Dubai 3,805,000 1833 AD[67]  

History

Main article: History of the Arabs

Early history

Further information: Arabization
 
The Great Mosque of Kairouan (also called the Mosque of Uqba) was founded in 670 by the Arab general and conqueror Uqba ibn Nafi.[68] The Great Mosque of Kairouan is located in the historic city of Kairouan in Tunisia.

The Arabs historically originate as a Central Semitic group in southern Levant and northern Arabian peninsula.[69] Arab tribes and federations such as Nabataeans, Tanukhids, Salihids, Ghassanids, and numerous other groups were prevalent in southern Levant (Syrian Desert) and northern Arabia. Their expansion beyond Arabia and the Syrian desert is due to the Muslim conquests of the 7th and 8th centuries. Iraq was conquered in 633, Levant (modern Syria, Israel, Palestine, Jordan and Lebanon ) 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.[70]

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, the Somali Republic in 1960, 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.

The Mutawakkilite Kingdom of Yemen also seceded directly from the Ottoman Empire in 1918. Oman, apart from brief intermittent Persian and Portuguese rule, has been self-governing since the 8th century.

Rise of Arab nationalism

Further information: Islam and modernity and Arab Cold War

The Arab League was formed in 1945 to represent the interests of the Arabs, and especially to pursue the political unification of the Arab world, a project known as Pan-Arabism.[22][23] There were some short-lived attempts at such unification in the mid-20th century, notably the United Arab Republic of 1958 to 1961. The Arab League's main goal is to unify politically the Arab populations so defined. Its permanent headquarters are located in Cairo. However, it was moved temporarily to Tunis during the 1980s, after Egypt was expelled for signing the Camp David Accords (1978).

Pan-Arabism has mostly been abandoned as an ideology since the 1980s, and was replaced by Pan-Islamism on one hand, and individual nationalisms on the other.

Modern conflicts

Main article: List of modern conflicts in the Middle East

Unification of Saudi Arabia

The unification of Saudi Arabia was a 30-year-long military and political campaign, by which the various tribes, sheikhdoms, and emirates of most of the Arabian Peninsula were conquered by the House of Saud, or Al Saud, between 1902 and 1932, when the modern-day Kingdom of Saudi Arabia was proclaimed. Carried out under the charismatic Abdul Aziz Ibn Saud, this process created what is sometimes referred to as the Third Saudi State, to differentiate it from the first and second states that existed under the Al Saud clan.

The Al-Saud had been in exile in Ottoman Iraq since 1893 following the disintegration of the Second Saudi State and the rise of Jebel Shammar under the Al Rashid clan. In 1902, Ibn Saud recaptured Riyadh, the Al Saud dynasty's former capital. He went on to subdue the rest of Nejd, Al-Hasa, Jebel Shammar, Asir, and Hejaz (location of the Muslim holy cities of Mecca and Medina) between 1913 and 1926. The resultant polity was named the Kingdom of Nejd and Hejaz from 1927 until it was further consolidated with Al-Hasa and Qatif into the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in 1932.

Arab–Israeli conflict

Further information: Arab–Israeli conflict

The establishment of the State of Israel in 1948 has given rise to the Arab–Israeli conflict, one of the major unresolved geopolitical conflicts.

The Arab states in changing alliances were involved in a number of wars with Israel and its western allies between 1948 and 1973, including the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, the 1956 Suez Crisis, the Six-Day War of 1967, and the Yom Kippur War of 1973. An Egypt–Israel peace treaty was signed in 1979.

Iran–Iraq War

Main article: Iran–Iraq War

The Iran–Iraq War (also known as the First Gulf War and by various other names) was an armed conflict between the armed forces of Iraq and Iran, lasting from September 1980 to August 1988, making it the second longest conventional war of the 20th century. It was initially referred to in English as the "Gulf War" prior to the "Gulf War" of 1990.

The war began when Iraq invaded Iran, launching a simultaneous invasion by air and land into Iranian territory on 22 September 1980 following a long history of border disputes, and fears of Shia Islam insurgency among Iraq's long-suppressed Shia majority influenced by the Iranian Revolution. Iraq was also aiming to replace Iran as the dominant Persian Gulf state. Although Iraq hoped to take advantage of the revolutionary chaos in Iran (see Iranian Revolution, 1979) and attacked without formal warning, they made only limited progress into Iran and were quickly repelled by the Iranians who regained virtually all lost territory by June 1982. For the next six years, Iran was on the offensive.

Lebanese Civil War

Main article: Lebanese Civil War

The Lebanese Civil War was a multifaceted civil war in Lebanon, lasting from 1975 to 1990 and resulting in an estimated 120,000 fatalities. Another one million people (a quarter of the population) were wounded,[citation needed] and today approximately 76,000 people remain displaced within Lebanon. There was also a mass exodus of almost one million people from Lebanon.

Western Sahara conflict

Main article: Western Sahara conflict

The Western Sahara War was an armed struggle between the Sahrawi Polisario Front and Morocco between 1975 and 1991, being the most significant phase of the Western Sahara conflict. The conflict erupted after the withdrawal of Spain from the Spanish Sahara in accordance with the Madrid Accords, by which it transferred administrative control of the territory to Morocco and Mauritania, but not the sovereignty. In 1975, Moroccan government organized the Green March of some 350,000 Moroccan citizens, escorted by around 20,000 troops, who entered Western Sahara, trying to establish Moroccan presence. While at first met with just minor resistance by the Polisario, Morocco later engaged a long period of guerilla warfare with the Sahrawi nationalists. During the late 1970s, the Polisario Front, desiring to establish an independent state in the territory, successively fought both Mauritania and Morocco. In 1979, Mauritania withdrew from the conflict after signing a peace treaty with the Polisario. The war continued in low intensity throughout the 1980s, though Morocco made several attempts to take the upper hand in 1989–1991. A cease-fire agreement was finally reached between the Polisario Front and Morocco in September 1991.

North Yemen Civil War

Main article: North Yemen Civil War

The North Yemen Civil War was fought in North Yemen between royalists of the Mutawakkilite Kingdom of Yemen and factions of the Yemen Arab Republic from 1962 to 1970. The war began with a coup d'état carried out by the republican leader, Abdullah as-Sallal, which dethroned the newly crowned Imam al-Badr and declared Yemen a republic under his presidency. The Imam escaped to the Saudi Arabian border and rallied popular support.

Somali Civil War

Main article: Somali Civil War

The Somali Civil War is an ongoing civil war taking place in Somalia. It began in 1991, when a coalition of clan-based armed opposition groups ousted the nation's long-standing military government.

Various factions began competing for influence in the power vacuum that followed, which precipitated an aborted UN peacekeeping attempt in the mid-1990s. A period of decentralization ensued, characterized by a return to customary and religious law in many areas as well as the establishment of autonomous regional governments in the northern part of the country. The early 2000s saw the creation of fledgling interim federal administrations, culminating in the establishment of the Transitional Federal Government (TFG) in 2004. In 2006, the TFG, assisted by Ethiopian troops, assumed control of most of the nation's southern conflict zones from the newly formed Islamic Courts Union (ICU). The ICU subsequently splintered into more radical groups, notably Al-Shabaab, which have since been fighting the Somali government and its AMISOM allies for control of the region. In 2011, a coordinated military operation between the Somali military and multinational forces began, which is believed to represent one of the final stages in the war's Islamist insurgency.[71]

Arab Spring

Main articles: Arab Spring, Libyan Civil War, and Syrian civil war

The popular protests throughout the Arab world of late 2010 to the present have been directed against authoritarian leadership and associated political corruption, paired with demands for more democratic rights. The two most violent and prolonged conflicts in the aftermath of the Arab Spring are the Libyan Civil War and Syrian Civil War.

Petroleum

While the Arab world had been of limited interest to the European colonial powers, the British Empire being mostly interested in the Suez Canal as a route to British India, the economic and geopolitical situation changed dramatically after the discovery of large petroleum deposits in the 1930s, coupled with the vastly increased demand for petroleum in the west as a result of the Second Industrial Revolution.

The Persian Gulf is particularly well-endowed with this strategic raw material: five Persian Gulf states, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, the UAE, Kuwait, and Qatar, are among the top ten petroleum or gas exporters worldwide. In Africa, Algeria (10th world) and Libya are important gas exporters. In addition Bahrain, Egypt, Tunisia, and Sudan all have smaller but significant reserves. Where present, these have had significant effects on regional politics, often enabling rentier states, leading to economic disparities between oil-rich and oil-poor countries, and, particularly in the more sparsely populated states of the Persian Gulf and Libya, triggering extensive labor immigration. It is believed that the Arab world holds approximately 46% of the world's total proven oil reserves and a quarter of the world's natural-gas reserves.[72]

Islamism and Pan-Islamism were on the rise during the 1980s. The Hezbollah, a militant Islamic party in Lebanon, was founded in 1982. Islamic terrorism became a problem in the Arab world in the 1970s to 1980s. While the Muslim Brotherhood had been active in Egypt since 1928, their militant actions were limited to assassination attempts on political leaders.

Recent history

Today, Arab states are characterized by their autocratic rulers and lack of democratic control. The 2016 Democracy Index classifies Lebanon, Iraq and Palestine as "hybrid regimes", Tunisia as a "flawed democracy" and all other Arab states as "authoritarian regimes". Similarly, the 2011 Freedom House report classifies the Comoros and Mauritania as "electoral democracies",[73] Lebanon, Kuwait and Morocco as "partly free", and all other Arab states as "not free".

The invasion of Kuwait by Iraq forces, led to the 1990–91 Persian Gulf War. Egypt, Syria and Saudi Arabia joined a multinational coalition that opposed Iraq. Displays of support for Iraq by Jordan and Palestine resulted in strained relations between many of the Arab states. After the war, a so-called "Damascus Declaration" formalized an alliance for future joint Arab defensive actions between Egypt, Syria, and the GCC states.[74]

A chain of events leading to the destabilization of the authoritarian regimes established during the 1950s throughout the Arab world became apparent during the early years of the 21st century. The 2003 invasion of Iraq led to the collapse of the Baathist regime and ultimate execution of Saddam Hussein.

A growing class of young, educated, secular citizens with access to modern media such as Al Jazeera (since 1996) and communicating via the internet began to form a third force besides the classical dichotomy of Pan-Arabism vs. Pan-Islamism that had dominated the second half of the 20th century. These citizens wish for reform in their country's religious institutions.[75]

In Syria, the Damascus Spring of 2000 to 2001 heralded the possibility of democratic change, but the Baathist regime managed to suppress the movement.

In 2003, the Egyptian Movement for Change, popularly known as Kefaya, was launched to oppose the Mubarak regime and to establish democratic reforms and greater civil liberties in Egypt.

States and territories

For the states and territories constituting the Arab world, see definition above.

Forms of government

Different forms of government are represented in the Arab World: Some of the countries are monarchies: Bahrain, Jordan, Kuwait, Morocco, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. The other Arab countries are all republics. With the exception of Lebanon, Tunisia, Iraq, Palestine, and recently Mauritania, democratic elections throughout the Arab World are generally viewed as compromised, due to outright vote rigging, intimidation of opposition parties, and severe restraints on civil liberties and political dissent.

After World War II, Pan-Arabism sought to unite all Arabic-speaking countries into one political entity. Only Syria, Iraq, Egypt, Sudan, Tunisia, Libya and North Yemen considered the short-lived unification of the United Arab Republic. Historical divisions, competing local nationalisms, and geographical sprawl were major reasons for the failure of Pan-Arabism. Arab Nationalism was another strong force in the region which peaked during the mid-20th century and was professed by many leaders in Egypt, Algeria, Libya, Syria, and Iraq. Arab Nationalist leaders of this period included Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt, Ahmed Ben Bella of Algeria, Michel Aflaq, Salah al-Din al-Bitar, Zaki al-Arsuzi, Constantin Zureiq and Shukri al-Kuwatli of Syria, Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr of Iraq, Habib Bourguiba of Tunisia, Mehdi Ben Barka of Morocco, and Shakib Arslan of Lebanon.

Later and current Arab Nationalist leaders include Muammar al-Gaddafi of Libya, Hafez al-Assad and Bashar al-Assad of Syria. The diverse Arab states generally maintained close ties but distinct national identities developed and strengthened with the social, historical and political realities of the past 60 years. This has made the idea of a pan-Arab nation-state increasingly less feasible and likely. Additionally, an upsurge in political Islam has since led to a greater emphasis on pan-Islamic rather than pan-Arab identity amongst some Arab Muslims. Arab nationalists who once opposed Islamic movements as a threat to their power, now deal with them differently for reasons of political reality.[76]

Modern boundaries

Many of the modern borders of the Arab World were drawn by European imperial powers during the 19th and early 20th century. However, some of the larger states (in particular Egypt and Syria) have historically maintained geographically definable boundaries, on which some of the modern states are roughly based. The 14th-century Egyptian historian Al-Maqrizi, for instance, defines Egypt's boundaries as extending from the Mediterranean in the north to lower Nubia in the south; and between the Red Sea in the east and the oases of the Western/Libyan desert. The modern borders of Egypt, therefore, are not a creation of European powers, and are at least in part based on historically definable entities which are in turn based on certain cultural and ethnic identifications.

At other times, kings, emirs or sheikhs were placed as semi-autonomous rulers over the newly created nation states, usually chosen by the same imperial powers that for some drew the new borders, for services rendered to European powers like the British Empire, e.g. Sherif Hussein ibn Ali. Many African states did not attain independence until the 1960s from France after bloody insurgencies for their freedom. These struggles were settled by the imperial powers approving the form of independence given, so as a consequence almost all of these borders have remained. Some of these borders were agreed upon without consultation of those individuals that had served the colonial interests of Britain or France. One such agreement solely between Britain and France (to the exclusion of Sherif Hussein ibn Ali), signed in total secrecy until Lenin released the full text, was the Sykes-Picot Agreement. Another influential document written without the consensus of the local population was the Balfour Declaration.

As former director of the Israeli intelligence agency Mossad, Efraim Halevy, now a director at the Hebrew University said,

The borders, which if you look on the maps of the middle-east are very straight lines, were drawn by British and French draftsmen who sat with maps and drew the lines of the frontiers with rulers. If the ruler for some reason or other moved on the map, because of some person's hand shaking, then the frontier moved (with the hand).[77]

He went on to give an example,

There was a famous story about a British consul, a lady named Gertrude Bell who drew the map between Iraq and Jordan, using transparent paper. She turned to talk to somebody and as she was turning the paper moved and the ruler moved and that added considerable territory to the (new) Jordanians.[77]

Historian Jim Crow, of Newcastle University, has said:

Without that imperial carve-up, Iraq would not be in the state it is in today...Gertrude Bell was one of two or three Britons who were instrumental in the creation of the Arab states in the Middle East that were favourable to Britain.[78]

Modern economies

As of 2006, the Arab world accounts for two-fifths of the gross domestic product and three-fifths of the trade of the wider Muslim world.[citation needed]

The Arab states are mostly, although not exclusively, developing economies and derive their export revenues from oil and gas, or the sale of other raw materials. Recent years have seen significant economic growth in the Arab World, due largely to an increase in oil and gas prices, which tripled between 2001 and 2006, but also due to efforts by some states to diversify their economic base. Industrial production has risen, for example the amount of steel produced between 2004 and 2005 rose from 8.4 to 19 million tonnes. (Source: Opening speech of Mahmoud Khoudri, Algeria's Industry Minister, at the 37th General Assembly of the Iron & Steel Arab Union, Algiers, May 2006). However even 19 million tons pa still only represents 1.7% of global steel production, and remains inferior to the production of countries like Brazil.[79]

The main economic organisations in the Arab World are the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), comprising the states in the Persian Gulf, and the Union of the Arab Maghreb (UMA), made up of North African States. The GCC has achieved some success in financial and monetary terms, including plans to establish a common currency in the Persian Gulf region. Since its foundation in 1989, the UMA's most significant accomplishment has been the establishment of a 7000 km highway crossing North Africa from Mauritania to Libya's border with Egypt. The central stretch of the highway, expected to be completed in 2010, will cross Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia. In recent years a new term has been coined to define a greater economic region: the MENA region (standing for "Middle East and North Africa") is becoming increasingly popular, especially with support from the current US administration.

As of August 2009 it was reported that Saudi Arabia is the strongest Arab economy according to World Bank.[80]

Saudi Arabia remains the top Arab economy in terms of total GDP. It is Asia's eleventh largest economy, followed by Egypt and Algeria, which were also the second and third largest economies in Africa (after South Africa), in 2006. In terms of GDP per capita, Qatar is the richest developing country in the world.[81]

The total GDP of all Arab countries in 1999 was US$531.2 billion.[82] By grouping all the latest GDP figures, the total Arab world GDP is estimated to be worth at least $2.8 trillion in 2011.[83] This is only smaller than the GDP of the US, China, Japan and Germany.

Geography

Main article: Geography of the Arab world

The Arab World stretches across more than 13,000,000 square kilometres (5,000,000 sq mi) of North Africa and the part of North-East Africa and South-West Asia. The eastern part of the Arab world is called the Mashriq. Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia, Libya and Mauritania are the Maghreb or Maghrib.

 
The Maghreb (Western Arab world)

The term "Arab" often connotes the Arabian Peninsula, but the larger (and more populous) part of the Arab World is North Africa. Its eight million square kilometers include two of the largest countries of the African continent, Algeria (2.4 million km2) in the center of the region and Sudan (1.9 million km2) in the southeast. Algeria is about three-quarters the size of India, or about one-and-a-half times the size of Alaska, the largest state in the United States. The largest country in the Arab Western Asia is Saudi Arabia (2 million km2).

At the other extreme, the smallest autonomous mainland Arab country is Lebanon (10,452 km2), and the smallest island Arab country is Bahrain (665 km2).

Notably, every Arab country borders a sea or ocean, with the exception of the Arab region of northern Chad, which is completely landlocked. Iraq is actually nearly landlocked, as it has only a very narrow access to the Persian Gulf.

Historical boundaries

The political borders of the Arab world have wandered, leaving Arab minorities in non-Arab countries of the Sahel and the Horn of Africa as well as in the Middle Eastern countries of Cyprus, Turkey and Iran, and also leaving non-Arab minorities in Arab countries. However, the basic geography of sea, desert and mountain provides the enduring natural boundaries for this region.

 
Abbasid caliphate (750 – 1258 CE)

The Arab world straddles two continents, Africa and Asia. It is mainly oriented along an east–west axis.

Arab Africa

Arab Africa comprises the entire northern third of the continent. It is surrounded by water on three sides (west, north, and east) and desert or desert scrubland on the fourth (south).

In the west, it is bounded by the shores of the Atlantic Ocean. From northeast to southwest, Morocco, Western Sahara (mostly unilaterally annexed by Morocco), and Mauritania make up the roughly 2,000 kilometers of Arab Atlantic coastline. The southwestern sweep of the coast is gentle but substantial, such that Mauritania's capital, Nouakchott (18°N, 16°W), is far enough west to share longitude with Iceland (13–22°W). Nouakchott is the westernmost capital of the Arab World and the third-westernmost in Africa, and sits on the Atlantic fringe of the southwestern Sahara. Next south along the coast from Mauritania is Senegal, whose abrupt border belies the gradient in culture from Arab to indigenous African that historically characterizes this part of West Africa.

Arab Africa's boundary to the north is again a continental boundary, the Mediterranean Sea. This boundary begins in the west with the narrow Strait of Gibraltar, the thirteen kilometer wide channel that connects the Mediterranean with the Atlantic to the west, and separates Morocco from Spain to the north. East along the coast from Morocco are Algeria, Tunisia, and Libya, followed by Egypt, which forms the region's (and the continent's) northeastern corner. The coast turns briefly but sharply south at Tunisia, slopes more gently southeastward through the Libyan capital of Tripoli, and bumps north through Libya's second city, Benghazi, before turning straight east again through Egypt's second city, Alexandria, at the mouth of the Nile. Along with the spine of Italy to its north, Tunisia thus marks the junction of western and eastern Mediterranean, and a cultural transition as well: west of Egypt begins the region of the Arab World known as the Maghreb include (Libya, Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco and Mauritania).

Historically the 4,000-kilometer Mediterranean boundary has fluttered. Population centers north of it in Europe have invited contact and Arab exploration—mostly friendly, though sometimes not. Islands and peninsulas near the Arab coast have changed hands. The islands of Sicily and Malta lie just a hundred kilometers east of the Tunisian city of Carthage, which has been a point of contact with Europe since its founding in the first millennium BCE; both Sicily and Malta at times have been part of the Arab World. Just across the Strait of Gibraltar from Morocco, regions of the Iberian peninsula were part of the Arab World throughout the Middle Ages, extending the northern boundary at times to the foothills of the Pyrenees and leaving a substantial mark on local and wider European and Western culture.

The northern boundary of the African Arab world has also fluttered briefly in the other direction, first through the Crusades and later through the imperial involvement of France, Britain, Spain, and Italy. Another visitor from northern shores, Turkey, controlled the east of the region for centuries, though not as a colonizer. Spain still maintains two small enclaves, Ceuta and Melilla (called "Morocco Espanol"), along the otherwise Moroccan coast. Overall this wave has ebbed, though like the Arab expansion north it has left its mark. The proximity of North Africa to Europe has always encouraged interaction, and this continues with Arab immigration to Europe and European interest in the Arab countries today. However, population centers and the physical fact of the sea keeps this boundary of the Arab World settled on the Mediterranean coastline.

To the east, the Red Sea defines the boundary between Africa and Asia, and thus also between Arab Africa and Arab Western Asia. This sea is a long and narrow waterway with a northwest tilt, stretching 2,300 kilometers from Egypt's Sinai peninsula southeast to the Bab-el-Mandeb strait between Djibouti in Africa and Yemen in Arabia but on average just 150 kilometers wide. Though the sea is navigable along its length, historically much contact between Arab Africa and Arab Western Asia has been either overland across the Sinai or by sea across the Mediterranean or the narrow Bab al Mendeb strait. From northwest to southeast, Egypt, Sudan, and Eritrea form the African coastline, with Djibouti marking Bab al Mendeb's African shore.

Southeast along the coast from Djibouti is Somalia, but the Somali coast soon makes a 90-degree turn and heads northeast, mirroring a bend in the coast of Yemen across the water to the north and defining the south coast of the Gulf of Aden. The Somali coast then takes a hairpin turn back southwest to complete the horn of Africa. For six months of the year the monsoon winds blow from up equatorial Somalia, past Arabia and over the small Yemeni archipelago of Socotra, to rain on India; they then switch directions and blow back. Hence the east- and especially southeast-coast boundary of Arab Africa has historically been a gateway for maritime trade and cultural exchange with both East Africa and the subcontinent. The trade winds also help explain the presence of the Comoros islands, an Arab-African country, off the coast of Mozambique, near Madagascar in the Indian Ocean, the southernmost part of the Arab World.

The southern boundary of Arab North Africa is the strip of scrubland known as the Sahel that crosses the continent south of the Sahara.

Arab Western Asia

The Western Asian Arab region comprises the Arabian Peninsula, most of the Levant (excluding Cyprus and Israel), most of Mesopotamia (excluding parts of Turkey and Iran) and the Persian Gulf region. The peninsula is roughly a tilted rectangle that leans back against the slope of northeast Africa, the long axis pointing toward Turkey and Europe.

See also

Notes

General

  1. ^ Source, unless otherwise specified: "Demographic Yearbook—Table 3: Population by sex, rate of population increase, surface area and density" (PDF). United Nations Statistics Division. 2008. (PDF) from the original on 24 December 2010. Retrieved 24 September 2010. {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help) Entries in this table giving figures other than the figures given in this source are bracketed by asterisks () in the Notes field, and the rationale for the figure used are explained in the associated Note.

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References

Further reading

  • Ajl, Max. Imperialism and Class in the Arab World (September 2016), Monthly Review
  • Ayalon, Amy (1987). Language and change in the Arab Middle East: the evolution of modern political discourse Studies in Middle Eastern history. Oxford University Press US. ISBN 978-0-19-504140-8.
  • Hourani, Albert (1983). Arabic Thought in the Liberal Age, 1798–1939. Rev., with a new preface. Cambridge, Eng.: Cambridge University Press. x, 406 p. ISBN 0-521-27423-0 pbk.
  • Tausch, Arno. A Look at International Survey Data About Arab Opinion (31 January 2014). "A look at recent (2013) international survey data about Arab opinion," Middle East Review of International Affairs, Vol. 17, No. 3 (Fall 2013), 57–74. SSRN 2388627
  • Tausch, Arno (2015). The political algebra of global value change: General models and implications for the Muslim world, with Almas Heshmati and Hichem Karoui (1st ed.). Nova Science Publishers, New York. ISBN 978-1-62948-899-8.

External links

  • Arab League Online
  • INFOSAMAK – Arab world
  • — Directories of all Arab world countries
  • Araboo.com — Arab world directory
  • — Arab articles
  • Carboun Information and resources relating to energy, environment, and sustainability in the Arab world
  •   Arab world travel guide from Wikivoyage

April 21, 2023
arab, world, arabic, ال, ال, ʿālam, ʿarabī, formally, arab, homeland, ال, waṭan, ʿarabī, also, known, arab, nation, ال, ummah, ʿarabīyyah, arabsphere, arab, states, refers, vast, group, countries, mainly, located, western, asia, northern, africa, majority, peo. The Arab world Arabic ا ل ع ال م ال ع ر ب ي al ʿalam al ʿarabi formally the Arab homeland ا ل و ط ن ال ع ر ب ي al waṭan al ʿarabi 7 8 9 also known as the Arab nation ا ل أ م ة ال ع ر ب ي ة al ummah al ʿarabiyyah the Arabsphere or the Arab states 10 refers to a vast group of countries mainly located in Western Asia and Northern Africa A majority of people in these countries are ethnically Arab 11 12 followed by Berbers Kurds Turkmens Assyrians and Armenians 13 Arabic language which is used as the lingua franca throughout the Arab world 14 15 16 17 18 19 Arab worldArea13 132 327 km2 5 070 420 sq mi 1 Population456 520 777 2 Population density29 839 km2 70 37 sq mi 3 GDP nominal 2 782 trillion 4 GDP per capita 6 647 5 DemonymArabCountries22 sovereign states Algeria Bahrain Comoros Djibouti Egypt Iraq Jordan Kuwait Lebanon Libya Mauritania Morocco Oman Palestine Qatar Saudi Arabia Somalia Sudan Syria Tunisia United Arab Emirates Yemen 2 de facto states Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic SomalilandDependenciesArab League 6 Time zonesUTC 00 00 to UTC 04 00Internet TLD africa asiaLargest citiesMajor cities of Arab world List Cairo Baghdad Riyadh Khartoum Amman Alexandria Kuwait City Casablanca Jeddah DubaiThe Arab world is at its minimum defined as the 18 states where Arabic is natively spoken 20 21 At its maximum it consists of the 22 members of the Arab League an international organization 6 which on top of the 18 states also includes the Comoros Djibouti Somalia and the partially recognized state of Palestine 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 6 The eastern part of the Arab world is known as the Mashriq and the western part as the Maghreb 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 2 The region is nevertheless diverse in many ways and economically includes some of the wealthiest as well as poorest populations 21 The region mostly corresponds with the Middle East and North Africa MENA definition 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 22 23 Contents 1 Terminology 2 Definition 2 1 Standard territorial 2 1 1 Member states of the Arab League 2 2 Ancillary linguistic 3 Arab League states 4 Demographics 4 1 Religion 4 2 Education 4 3 Film industry 4 4 Gender equality and women s rights 4 4 1 Child marriages 4 4 2 Violence 4 5 Largest cities 5 History 5 1 Early history 5 2 Ottoman and colonial rule 5 3 Rise of Arab nationalism 5 4 Modern conflicts 5 4 1 Unification of Saudi Arabia 5 4 2 Arab Israeli conflict 5 4 3 Iran Iraq War 5 4 4 Lebanese Civil War 5 4 5 Western Sahara conflict 5 4 6 North Yemen Civil War 5 4 7 Somali Civil War 5 4 8 Arab Spring 5 5 Petroleum 5 6 Recent history 6 States and territories 6 1 Forms of government 6 2 Modern boundaries 6 3 Modern economies 7 Geography 7 1 Historical boundaries 7 1 1 Arab Africa 7 1 2 Arab Western Asia 8 See also 9 Notes 9 1 General 9 2 Sources 10 References 11 Further reading 12 External linksTerminologyIn page 9 of Best Divisions for Knowledge of the Regions 10th Century Arab Geographer Al Maqdisi used the term Arab regions Arabic أ ق ال يم ٱل ع ر ب 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 Turkey Egypt and the Maghreb Algeria Libya Mauritania Morocco Tunisia Western Sahara Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic to be part of the Arab regions 24 Malta an island country in Southern Europe whose national language also derives from Arabic through Sicilian Arabic is not included in the region 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 DefinitionThe 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 الد ار ج ة everyday colloquial language 25 in the Maghreb or Aammiyya ٱل ع ام ي ة common language in the Mashreq The majority of the vocabulary in these vernaculars is shared with Standard Arabic but they also significantly borrow from other languages such as Berber French Spanish and Italian in the Maghreb 26 Standard territorial Main article Arab League Although no globally accepted definition of the Arab world exists 6 all countries that are members of the Arab League are generally acknowledged as being part of the Arab world 6 27 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 An Arab is a person whose language is Arabic who lives in an Arabic country and who is in sympathy with the aspirations of the Arabic people 28 This standard territorial definition is sometimes seen to be inappropriate 29 or problematic 30 and may be supplemented with certain additional elements see ancillary linguistic definition below 31 Member states of the Arab League Main article Member states of the Arab League Algeria Arabic الجزائر al Jaza ir Tamazight is the other official language French is used in education daily life and business Bahrain Arabic البحرين al Baḥrayn Comoros Arabic جزر القمر Juzur al Qamar Comorian and French are the other official languages Djibouti Arabic جيبوتي Jibuti French is the other official language Egypt Arabic مصر Miṣr Iraq Arabic العراق al Iraq Kurdish is the other official language minority Jordan Arabic الأردن al Urdun Kuwait Arabic الكويت al Kuwayt Lebanon Arabic لبنان Lubnan Libya Arabic ليبيا Libya Mauritania Arabic موريتانيا Muritanya Morocco Arabic المغرب al Maghrib Tamazight is the other official language French is used in education daily life and business Oman Arabic عمان Uman Palestinian territories Arabic فلسطين Filasṭin Qatar Arabic قطر Qaṭar Saudi Arabia Arabic المملكة العربية السعودية al Mamlakah al Arabiyah as Sa udiyah Somalia Arabic الصومال aṣ Ṣumal Somali is the other official language Sudan Arabic السودان as Sudan Syria Arabic سوريا Surya Tunisia Arabic تونس Tunis French is used in education daily life and business United Arab Emirates Arabic الإمارات العربي ة المت حدة al Imarat al Arabiyah al Muttaḥidah Yemen Arabic اليمن al Yaman Ancillary linguistic Main article Arabic language As an alternative to 32 or in combination with 6 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 33 or those states or territories in which the majority of the population speaks Arabic and thus may also include populations of the Arab diaspora 6 When an ancillary linguistic definition is used in combination with the standard territorial definition various parameters may be applied clarification needed to determine whether a state or territory should be included in this alternative definition of the Arab world These parameters may be applied clarification needed 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 has two official languages Arabic and Somali while Somaliland has three Arabic Somali and English 34 Both Arabic and Somali belong to the larger Afro Asiatic language family Although Arabic is widely spoken by many people in the north and urban areas in the south Somali is the most widely used language and contains many Arabic loan words 35 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 36 The Comoros has three official languages Arabic Comorian and French Comorian is the most widely spoken language with Arabic having a religious significance and French being associated with the educational system Chad Eritrea 37 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 31 38 Arab citizens of Israel may concurrently be considered a constituent part of the Arab world Iran has about 1 5 million Arabic speakers 39 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 40 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 Arab League statesCountry Area Rank Area km2 Note 1 Area sq mi Area of total Area Notes Population 2021 41 42 Population World rank Density rank Density km2 Density sq mi Algeria 1 2 381 741 919 595 18 1 Largest country in Africa and in the Arab world 44 177 969 34 17 16 41Bahrain 22 758 293 0 005 1 463 265 155 1 1 646 4 263Comoros 21 2 235 863 0 01 821 625 163 4 309 800Djibouti 16 23 200 9 000 0 1 1 105 557 159 15 37 96Egypt 6 1 002 000 387 000 7 6 Excluding the Hala ib Triangle 20 580 km2 7 950 sq mi 109 262 178 16 9 107 277Iraq 10 435 244 168 049 3 3 43 533 592 40 12 70 181Jordan 14 89 342 34 495 0 7 11 148 278 106 11 71 184Kuwait 17 17 818 6 880 0 1 4 250 114 134 5 200 518Lebanon 19 10 452 4 036 0 08 5 592 631 125 3 404 1 046Libya 4 1 759 540 679 360 11 4 6 735 277 103 21 3 6 9 3Mauritania 5 1 025 520 395 960 7 8 4 614 974 138 22 3 2 8 3Morocco 9 446 550 172 410 3 3 Including Western Sahara 266 000 km2 103 000 sq mi 37 076 584 35 10 83 215Oman 11 309 500 119 500 2 4 4 520 471 139 20 9 2 24Palestine 20 6 220 2 400 0 05 5 133 392 126 2 687 1 779Qatar 18 11 586 4 473 0 08 2 688 235 149 6 154 399Saudi Arabia 2 2 149 690 830 000 16 4 Largest country in Western Asia 35 950 396 45 19 13 34Somalia 7 637 657 246 201 5 0 Longest coastline in Africa and the Arab League 17 065 581 80 18 14 36Sudan 3 1 861 484 718 723 14 2 Formerly the largest country in Africa 45 657 202 39 16 16 41Syria 12 185 180 71 500 1 4 Includes parts of Golan Heights 1 200 km2 460 sq mi 21 324 367 55 7 118 306Tunisia 13 163 610 63 170 1 2 12 262 946 77 13 65 168United Arab Emirates 15 83 600 32 300 0 6 9 365 145 93 8 99 256Yemen 8 527 968 203 850 4 0 32 981 641 49 14 45 117Arab League total 13 130 695 5 069 790 406 691 829DemographicsMain article Demographics of the Arab world In the Arab world Modern Standard Arabic derived from Classical Arabic symptomatic of Arabic diglossia serves as an official language in the Arab League states and Arabic dialects are used as lingua franca Various indigenous languages are also spoken which predate the spread of the Arabic language This contrasts with the situation in the wider Islamic world where in contiguous Iran Pakistan and Afghanistan the Perso Arabic script is used and Arabic is the primary liturgical language but the tongue is not official at the state level or spoken as a vernacular Arabs constitute around one quarter of the 1 5 billion Muslims in the Islamic world 43 Religion This article needs to be updated The reason given is Relating to the Arab world survey conducted by the BBC https www bbc com news world middle east 48703377 Please help update this section to reflect recent events or newly available information June 2019 The majority of people in the Arab world adhere to Islam and the religion has official status in most countries Shariah law exists partially in the legal system in some countries especially in the Arabian peninsula while others are legislatively secular The majority of the Arab countries adhere to Sunni Islam Iraq and Bahrain however are Shia majority countries while Lebanon Yemen and Kuwait have large Shia minorities In Saudi Arabia Ismailite pockets are also found in the eastern Al Hasa region and the southern city of Najran Ibadi Islam is practiced in Oman where Ibadis constitute around 75 of Muslims There are also Christian adherents in the Arab world particularly in Egypt Syria Lebanon Iraq Jordan and Palestine Small native Christian communities can be found also throughout the Arabian Peninsula and North Africa 44 Coptic Maronite and Assyrian Christian enclaves exist in the Nile Valley Levant and northern Iraq respectively There are also Assyrian Armenian Syriac Aramean and Arab Christians throughout Iraq Syria Palestine Lebanon and Jordan There are also native Arab Christian communities in Algeria 45 Bahrain 46 Morocco 47 48 Kuwait 49 and Tunisia 50 Smaller ethno religious minorities across the Arab League include the Yezidis Yarsan and Shabaks mainly in Iraq the Druzes mainly in Syria and also in Lebanon Jordan 51 and Mandaeans in Iraq Formerly there were significant minorities of Jews throughout the Arab World However the Arab Israeli conflict prompted their mass exodus between 1948 and 1972 Today small Jewish communities remain ranging anywhere from just 10 in Bahrain to more than 1 000 in Tunisia and some 3 000 in Morocco Historically slavery in the Muslim world developed out of pre Islamic practices of slavery in the Arab world 52 53 Education Main article Higher Education in the Arab World According to UNESCO the average rate of adult literacy ages 15 and older in this region is 76 9 In Mauritania and Yemen the rate is lower than the average at barely over 50 Syria Lebanon Palestine and Jordan record a high adult literacy rate of over 90 citation needed The average rate of adult literacy shows steady improvement and the absolute number of adult illiterates fell from 64 million to around 58 million between 1990 and 2000 2004 Overall the gender disparity in adult literacy is high in this region and of the illiteracy rate women account for two thirds with only 69 literate women for every 100 literate men The average GPI Gender Parity Index for adult literacy is 0 72 and gender disparity can be observed in Egypt Morocco and Yemen Above all the GPI of Yemen is only 0 46 in a 53 adult literacy rate 54 Literacy rate is higher among the youth than adults Youth literacy rate ages 15 24 in the Arab region increased from 63 9 to 76 3 from 1990 to 2002 The average rate of GCC States Cooperation Council for the Arab States of the Gulf GCC This section s use of external links may not follow Wikipedia s policies or guidelines Please improve this article by removing excessive or inappropriate external links and converting useful links where appropriate into footnote references December 2022 Learn how and when to remove this template message Cooperation Council for the Arab States of the Gulf GCC was 94 followed by the Maghreb at 83 2 and the Mashriq at 73 6 The United Nations published an Arab human development report in 2002 2003 and 2004 These reports written by researchers from the Arab world address some sensitive issues in the development of Arab countries women empowerment availability of education and information among others Film industry There is no single description of Arab cinema since it includes films from various countries and cultures of the Arab world and therefore does not have one form structure or style 55 In its inception Arab cinema was mostly an imitation of Western Cinema However it has and continues to constantly change and evolve 55 Arab Cinema is a constantly changing and evolving industry 55 It mostly includes films made in Egypt Lebanon Syria Iraq Kuwait Algeria Morocco and Tunisia 55 However Egypt is a pioneer among Arab countries in the field of cinema 56 Each country in the region has its own unique characteristics and identifiable brand of cinema 55 Salah Zulfikar and Faten Hamama in the premiere of Bain Al Atlal Among the Ruins in Cairo 1959 Elsewhere in North Africa and the Middle East film production was scarce until the late 1960s and early 1970s when filmmakers began to receive funding and financial assistance from state organizations 55 This was during the post independence and is when most Arab cinema took root 57 Most films produced at that time were funded by the state and contained a nationalistic dimension These films helped to advance certain social causes such as independence and other social economic and political agendas 57 A sustained film industry was able to emerge in Egypt when other parts of the Arab world had only been able to sporadically produce feature length films due to limited financing 55 Arabic cinema is dominated by films from Egypt Three quarters of all Arab movies are produced in Egypt According to film critic and historian Roy Armes the Cinema of Lebanon is the only other cinema in the Arabic speaking region beside Egypt s that could amount to a national cinema 58 While Egyptian and Lebanese cinema have a long history of production most other Arab countries did not witness film production until after independence and even today the majority of film production in countries like Bahrain Libya Saudi Arabia Sudan and the United Arab Emirates is limited to television or short films 59 There is increased interest in films originating in the Arab world For example films from Algeria Lebanon Morocco Palestine Syria and Tunisia are making wider and more frequent rounds than ever before in local film festivals and repertoire theaters 60 Arab cinema has explored many topics from politics colonialism tradition modernity and social taboos 61 It has also attempted to escape from its earlier tendency to mimic and rely on Western film devices 61 In fact colonization did not only influence Arab films but it also had an impact on Arab movies theaters 62 Apart from the history of Arab cinema recently the portrayal of women became an important aspect in the production of Arab cinema Arab woman shaped a great portion of the film industry in the Arab world by employing their cinematic talents in improving the production of Arab films 62 However the production of Arab cinema has declined in the last decades and many filmmakers in the Middle East gathered to hold a meeting and discuss the current state of Arab cinema 63 Gender equality and women s rights Women in the Arab world are still denied equality of opportunity although their disenfranchisement is a critical factor crippling the Arab nations quest to return to the first rank of global leaders in commerce learning and culture according to a United Nations sponsored report in 2008 64 Child marriages According to the United Nations 14 of Arab girls are married by the age of 18 65 Violence Rapists are often treated leniently or acquitted in the Arab region if they marry their victims 37 of Arab women experienced violence in their lifetime but the numbers may be higher according to indicators In some countries the share of women experiencing violence and abuse by intimate partner reaches 70 65 Largest cities Main article List of largest cities in the Arab world Table of largest cities in the Arab world by official city propers 66 Rank Country City Population Founding date Image1 Egypt Cairo 16 225 000 969 AD 2 Iraq Baghdad 7 960 000 762 AD 3 Saudi Arabia Riyadh 6 030 000 100 200 AD 4 Sudan Khartoum 5 345 000 1821 AD 5 Jordan Amman 4 995 000 7250 BC 6 Egypt Alexandria 4 870 000 331 BC 7 Kuwait Kuwait City 4 660 000 1613 AD 8 Morocco Casablanca 4 370 000 768 AD 9 Saudi Arabia Jeddah 3 875 000 600 BC 10 United Arab Emirates Dubai 3 805 000 1833 AD 67 HistoryMain article History of the Arabs Early history Further information Arabization The Great Mosque of Kairouan also called the Mosque of Uqba was founded in 670 by the Arab general and conqueror Uqba ibn Nafi 68 The Great Mosque of Kairouan is located in the historic city of Kairouan in Tunisia The Arabs historically originate as a Central Semitic group in southern Levant and northern Arabian peninsula 69 Arab tribes and federations such as Nabataeans Tanukhids Salihids Ghassanids and numerous other groups were prevalent in southern Levant Syrian Desert and northern Arabia Their expansion beyond Arabia and the Syrian desert is due to the Muslim conquests of the 7th and 8th centuries Iraq was conquered in 633 Levant modern Syria Israel Palestine Jordan and Lebanon 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 70 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 the Somali Republic in 1960 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 The Mutawakkilite Kingdom of Yemen also seceded directly from the Ottoman Empire in 1918 Oman apart from brief intermittent Persian and Portuguese rule has been self governing since the 8th century Rise of Arab nationalism Further information Islam and modernity and Arab Cold War The Arab League was formed in 1945 to represent the interests of the Arabs and especially to pursue the political unification of the Arab world a project known as Pan Arabism 22 23 There were some short lived attempts at such unification in the mid 20th century notably the United Arab Republic of 1958 to 1961 The Arab League s main goal is to unify politically the Arab populations so defined Its permanent headquarters are located in Cairo However it was moved temporarily to Tunis during the 1980s after Egypt was expelled for signing the Camp David Accords 1978 Pan Arabism has mostly been abandoned as an ideology since the 1980s and was replaced by Pan Islamism on one hand and individual nationalisms on the other Modern conflicts Main article List of modern conflicts in the Middle East Unification of Saudi Arabia The unification of Saudi Arabia was a 30 year long military and political campaign by which the various tribes sheikhdoms and emirates of most of the Arabian Peninsula were conquered by the House of Saud or Al Saud between 1902 and 1932 when the modern day Kingdom of Saudi Arabia was proclaimed Carried out under the charismatic Abdul Aziz Ibn Saud this process created what is sometimes referred to as the Third Saudi State to differentiate it from the first and second states that existed under the Al Saud clan The Al Saud had been in exile in Ottoman Iraq since 1893 following the disintegration of the Second Saudi State and the rise of Jebel Shammar under the Al Rashid clan In 1902 Ibn Saud recaptured Riyadh the Al Saud dynasty s former capital He went on to subdue the rest of Nejd Al Hasa Jebel Shammar Asir and Hejaz location of the Muslim holy cities of Mecca and Medina between 1913 and 1926 The resultant polity was named the Kingdom of Nejd and Hejaz from 1927 until it was further consolidated with Al Hasa and Qatif into the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in 1932 Arab Israeli conflict Further information Arab Israeli conflict The establishment of the State of Israel in 1948 has given rise to the Arab Israeli conflict one of the major unresolved geopolitical conflicts The Arab states in changing alliances were involved in a number of wars with Israel and its western allies between 1948 and 1973 including the 1948 Arab Israeli War the 1956 Suez Crisis the Six Day War of 1967 and the Yom Kippur War of 1973 An Egypt Israel peace treaty was signed in 1979 Iran Iraq War Main article Iran Iraq War The Iran Iraq War also known as the First Gulf War and by various other names was an armed conflict between the armed forces of Iraq and Iran lasting from September 1980 to August 1988 making it the second longest conventional war of the 20th century It was initially referred to in English as the Gulf War prior to the Gulf War of 1990 The war began when Iraq invaded Iran launching a simultaneous invasion by air and land into Iranian territory on 22 September 1980 following a long history of border disputes and fears of Shia Islam insurgency among Iraq s long suppressed Shia majority influenced by the Iranian Revolution Iraq was also aiming to replace Iran as the dominant Persian Gulf state Although Iraq hoped to take advantage of the revolutionary chaos in Iran see Iranian Revolution 1979 and attacked without formal warning they made only limited progress into Iran and were quickly repelled by the Iranians who regained virtually all lost territory by June 1982 For the next six years Iran was on the offensive Lebanese Civil War Main article Lebanese Civil War The Lebanese Civil War was a multifaceted civil war in Lebanon lasting from 1975 to 1990 and resulting in an estimated 120 000 fatalities Another one million people a quarter of the population were wounded citation needed and today approximately 76 000 people remain displaced within Lebanon There was also a mass exodus of almost one million people from Lebanon Western Sahara conflict Main article Western Sahara conflict The Western Sahara War was an armed struggle between the Sahrawi Polisario Front and Morocco between 1975 and 1991 being the most significant phase of the Western Sahara conflict The conflict erupted after the withdrawal of Spain from the Spanish Sahara in accordance with the Madrid Accords by which it transferred administrative control of the territory to Morocco and Mauritania but not the sovereignty In 1975 Moroccan government organized the Green March of some 350 000 Moroccan citizens escorted by around 20 000 troops who entered Western Sahara trying to establish Moroccan presence While at first met with just minor resistance by the Polisario Morocco later engaged a long period of guerilla warfare with the Sahrawi nationalists During the late 1970s the Polisario Front desiring to establish an independent state in the territory successively fought both Mauritania and Morocco In 1979 Mauritania withdrew from the conflict after signing a peace treaty with the Polisario The war continued in low intensity throughout the 1980s though Morocco made several attempts to take the upper hand in 1989 1991 A cease fire agreement was finally reached between the Polisario Front and Morocco in September 1991 North Yemen Civil War Main article North Yemen Civil War The North Yemen Civil War was fought in North Yemen between royalists of the Mutawakkilite Kingdom of Yemen and factions of the Yemen Arab Republic from 1962 to 1970 The war began with a coup d etat carried out by the republican leader Abdullah as Sallal which dethroned the newly crowned Imam al Badr and declared Yemen a republic under his presidency The Imam escaped to the Saudi Arabian border and rallied popular support Somali Civil War Main article Somali Civil War The Somali Civil War is an ongoing civil war taking place in Somalia It began in 1991 when a coalition of clan based armed opposition groups ousted the nation s long standing military government Various factions began competing for influence in the power vacuum that followed which precipitated an aborted UN peacekeeping attempt in the mid 1990s A period of decentralization ensued characterized by a return to customary and religious law in many areas as well as the establishment of autonomous regional governments in the northern part of the country The early 2000s saw the creation of fledgling interim federal administrations culminating in the establishment of the Transitional Federal Government TFG in 2004 In 2006 the TFG assisted by Ethiopian troops assumed control of most of the nation s southern conflict zones from the newly formed Islamic Courts Union ICU The ICU subsequently splintered into more radical groups notably Al Shabaab which have since been fighting the Somali government and its AMISOM allies for control of the region In 2011 a coordinated military operation between the Somali military and multinational forces began which is believed to represent one of the final stages in the war s Islamist insurgency 71 Arab Spring Main articles Arab Spring Libyan Civil War and Syrian civil war The popular protests throughout the Arab world of late 2010 to the present have been directed against authoritarian leadership and associated political corruption paired with demands for more democratic rights The two most violent and prolonged conflicts in the aftermath of the Arab Spring are the Libyan Civil War and Syrian Civil War Petroleum While the Arab world had been of limited interest to the European colonial powers the British Empire being mostly interested in the Suez Canal as a route to British India the economic and geopolitical situation changed dramatically after the discovery of large petroleum deposits in the 1930s coupled with the vastly increased demand for petroleum in the west as a result of the Second Industrial Revolution The Persian Gulf is particularly well endowed with this strategic raw material five Persian Gulf states Saudi Arabia Iraq the UAE Kuwait and Qatar are among the top ten petroleum or gas exporters worldwide In Africa Algeria 10th world and Libya are important gas exporters In addition Bahrain Egypt Tunisia and Sudan all have smaller but significant reserves Where present these have had significant effects on regional politics often enabling rentier states leading to economic disparities between oil rich and oil poor countries and particularly in the more sparsely populated states of the Persian Gulf and Libya triggering extensive labor immigration It is believed that the Arab world holds approximately 46 of the world s total proven oil reserves and a quarter of the world s natural gas reserves 72 Islamism and Pan Islamism were on the rise during the 1980s The Hezbollah a militant Islamic party in Lebanon was founded in 1982 Islamic terrorism became a problem in the Arab world in the 1970s to 1980s While the Muslim Brotherhood had been active in Egypt since 1928 their militant actions were limited to assassination attempts on political leaders Recent history Today Arab states are characterized by their autocratic rulers and lack of democratic control The 2016 Democracy Index classifies Lebanon Iraq and Palestine as hybrid regimes Tunisia as a flawed democracy and all other Arab states as authoritarian regimes Similarly the 2011 Freedom House report classifies the Comoros and Mauritania as electoral democracies 73 Lebanon Kuwait and Morocco as partly free and all other Arab states as not free The invasion of Kuwait by Iraq forces led to the 1990 91 Persian Gulf War Egypt Syria and Saudi Arabia joined a multinational coalition that opposed Iraq Displays of support for Iraq by Jordan and Palestine resulted in strained relations between many of the Arab states After the war a so called Damascus Declaration formalized an alliance for future joint Arab defensive actions between Egypt Syria and the GCC states 74 A chain of events leading to the destabilization of the authoritarian regimes established during the 1950s throughout the Arab world became apparent during the early years of the 21st century The 2003 invasion of Iraq led to the collapse of the Baathist regime and ultimate execution of Saddam Hussein A growing class of young educated secular citizens with access to modern media such as Al Jazeera since 1996 and communicating via the internet began to form a third force besides the classical dichotomy of Pan Arabism vs Pan Islamism that had dominated the second half of the 20th century These citizens wish for reform in their country s religious institutions 75 In Syria the Damascus Spring of 2000 to 2001 heralded the possibility of democratic change but the Baathist regime managed to suppress the movement In 2003 the Egyptian Movement for Change popularly known as Kefaya was launched to oppose the Mubarak regime and to establish democratic reforms and greater civil liberties in Egypt States and territoriesFor the states and territories constituting the Arab world see definition above Forms of government Different forms of government are represented in the Arab World Some of the countries are monarchies Bahrain Jordan Kuwait Morocco Oman Qatar Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates The other Arab countries are all republics With the exception of Lebanon Tunisia Iraq Palestine and recently Mauritania democratic elections throughout the Arab World are generally viewed as compromised due to outright vote rigging intimidation of opposition parties and severe restraints on civil liberties and political dissent After World War II Pan Arabism sought to unite all Arabic speaking countries into one political entity Only Syria Iraq Egypt Sudan Tunisia Libya and North Yemen considered the short lived unification of the United Arab Republic Historical divisions competing local nationalisms and geographical sprawl were major reasons for the failure of Pan Arabism Arab Nationalism was another strong force in the region which peaked during the mid 20th century and was professed by many leaders in Egypt Algeria Libya Syria and Iraq Arab Nationalist leaders of this period included Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt Ahmed Ben Bella of Algeria Michel Aflaq Salah al Din al Bitar Zaki al Arsuzi Constantin Zureiq and Shukri al Kuwatli of Syria Ahmed Hassan al Bakr of Iraq Habib Bourguiba of Tunisia Mehdi Ben Barka of Morocco and Shakib Arslan of Lebanon Later and current Arab Nationalist leaders include Muammar al Gaddafi of Libya Hafez al Assad and Bashar al Assad of Syria The diverse Arab states generally maintained close ties but distinct national identities developed and strengthened with the social historical and political realities of the past 60 years This has made the idea of a pan Arab nation state increasingly less feasible and likely Additionally an upsurge in political Islam has since led to a greater emphasis on pan Islamic rather than pan Arab identity amongst some Arab Muslims Arab nationalists who once opposed Islamic movements as a threat to their power now deal with them differently for reasons of political reality 76 Modern boundaries Many of the modern borders of the Arab World were drawn by European imperial powers during the 19th and early 20th century However some of the larger states in particular Egypt and Syria have historically maintained geographically definable boundaries on which some of the modern states are roughly based The 14th century Egyptian historian Al Maqrizi for instance defines Egypt s boundaries as extending from the Mediterranean in the north to lower Nubia in the south and between the Red Sea in the east and the oases of the Western Libyan desert The modern borders of Egypt therefore are not a creation of European powers and are at least in part based on historically definable entities which are in turn based on certain cultural and ethnic identifications At other times kings emirs or sheikhs were placed as semi autonomous rulers over the newly created nation states usually chosen by the same imperial powers that for some drew the new borders for services rendered to European powers like the British Empire e g Sherif Hussein ibn Ali Many African states did not attain independence until the 1960s from France after bloody insurgencies for their freedom These struggles were settled by the imperial powers approving the form of independence given so as a consequence almost all of these borders have remained Some of these borders were agreed upon without consultation of those individuals that had served the colonial interests of Britain or France One such agreement solely between Britain and France to the exclusion of Sherif Hussein ibn Ali signed in total secrecy until Lenin released the full text was the Sykes Picot Agreement Another influential document written without the consensus of the local population was the Balfour Declaration As former director of the Israeli intelligence agency Mossad Efraim Halevy now a director at the Hebrew University said The borders which if you look on the maps of the middle east are very straight lines were drawn by British and French draftsmen who sat with maps and drew the lines of the frontiers with rulers If the ruler for some reason or other moved on the map because of some person s hand shaking then the frontier moved with the hand 77 He went on to give an example There was a famous story about a British consul a lady named Gertrude Bell who drew the map between Iraq and Jordan using transparent paper She turned to talk to somebody and as she was turning the paper moved and the ruler moved and that added considerable territory to the new Jordanians 77 Historian Jim Crow of Newcastle University has said Without that imperial carve up Iraq would not be in the state it is in today Gertrude Bell was one of two or three Britons who were instrumental in the creation of the Arab states in the Middle East that were favourable to Britain 78 Modern economies As of 2006 the Arab world accounts for two fifths of the gross domestic product and three fifths of the trade of the wider Muslim world citation needed The Arab states are mostly although not exclusively developing economies and derive their export revenues from oil and gas or the sale of other raw materials Recent years have seen significant economic growth in the Arab World due largely to an increase in oil and gas prices which tripled between 2001 and 2006 but also due to efforts by some states to diversify their economic base Industrial production has risen for example the amount of steel produced between 2004 and 2005 rose from 8 4 to 19 million tonnes Source Opening speech of Mahmoud Khoudri Algeria s Industry Minister at the 37th General Assembly of the Iron amp Steel Arab Union Algiers May 2006 However even 19 million tons pa still only represents 1 7 of global steel production and remains inferior to the production of countries like Brazil 79 The main economic organisations in the Arab World are the Gulf Cooperation Council GCC comprising the states in the Persian Gulf and the Union of the Arab Maghreb UMA made up of North African States The GCC has achieved some success in financial and monetary terms including plans to establish a common currency in the Persian Gulf region Since its foundation in 1989 the UMA s most significant accomplishment has been the establishment of a 7000 km highway crossing North Africa from Mauritania to Libya s border with Egypt The central stretch of the highway expected to be completed in 2010 will cross Morocco Algeria and Tunisia In recent years a new term has been coined to define a greater economic region the MENA region standing for Middle East and North Africa is becoming increasingly popular especially with support from the current US administration As of August 2009 it was reported that Saudi Arabia is the strongest Arab economy according to World Bank 80 Saudi Arabia remains the top Arab economy in terms of total GDP It is Asia s eleventh largest economy followed by Egypt and Algeria which were also the second and third largest economies in Africa after South Africa in 2006 In terms of GDP per capita Qatar is the richest developing country in the world 81 The total GDP of all Arab countries in 1999 was US 531 2 billion 82 By grouping all the latest GDP figures the total Arab world GDP is estimated to be worth at least 2 8 trillion in 2011 83 This is only smaller than the GDP of the US China Japan and Germany GeographyMain article Geography of the Arab world The Arab World stretches across more than 13 000 000 square kilometres 5 000 000 sq mi of North Africa and the part of North East Africa and South West Asia The eastern part of the Arab world is called the Mashriq Algeria Morocco Tunisia Libya and Mauritania are the Maghreb or Maghrib The Maghreb Western Arab world The term Arab often connotes the Arabian Peninsula but the larger and more populous part of the Arab World is North Africa Its eight million square kilometers include two of the largest countries of the African continent Algeria 2 4 million km2 in the center of the region and Sudan 1 9 million km2 in the southeast Algeria is about three quarters the size of India or about one and a half times the size of Alaska the largest state in the United States The largest country in the Arab Western Asia is Saudi Arabia 2 million km2 At the other extreme the smallest autonomous mainland Arab country is Lebanon 10 452 km2 and the smallest island Arab country is Bahrain 665 km2 Notably every Arab country borders a sea or ocean with the exception of the Arab region of northern Chad which is completely landlocked Iraq is actually nearly landlocked as it has only a very narrow access to the Persian Gulf Historical boundaries The political borders of the Arab world have wandered leaving Arab minorities in non Arab countries of the Sahel and the Horn of Africa as well as in the Middle Eastern countries of Cyprus Turkey and Iran and also leaving non Arab minorities in Arab countries However the basic geography of sea desert and mountain provides the enduring natural boundaries for this region Abbasid caliphate 750 1258 CE The Arab world straddles two continents Africa and Asia It is mainly oriented along an east west axis Arab Africa Arab Africa comprises the entire northern third of the continent It is surrounded by water on three sides west north and east and desert or desert scrubland on the fourth south In the west it is bounded by the shores of the Atlantic Ocean From northeast to southwest Morocco Western Sahara mostly unilaterally annexed by Morocco and Mauritania make up the roughly 2 000 kilometers of Arab Atlantic coastline The southwestern sweep of the coast is gentle but substantial such that Mauritania s capital Nouakchott 18 N 16 W is far enough west to share longitude with Iceland 13 22 W Nouakchott is the westernmost capital of the Arab World and the third westernmost in Africa and sits on the Atlantic fringe of the southwestern Sahara Next south along the coast from Mauritania is Senegal whose abrupt border belies the gradient in culture from Arab to indigenous African that historically characterizes this part of West Africa Arab Africa s boundary to the north is again a continental boundary the Mediterranean Sea This boundary begins in the west with the narrow Strait of Gibraltar the thirteen kilometer wide channel that connects the Mediterranean with the Atlantic to the west and separates Morocco from Spain to the north East along the coast from Morocco are Algeria Tunisia and Libya followed by Egypt which forms the region s and the continent s northeastern corner The coast turns briefly but sharply south at Tunisia slopes more gently southeastward through the Libyan capital of Tripoli and bumps north through Libya s second city Benghazi before turning straight east again through Egypt s second city Alexandria at the mouth of the Nile Along with the spine of Italy to its north Tunisia thus marks the junction of western and eastern Mediterranean and a cultural transition as well west of Egypt begins the region of the Arab World known as the Maghreb include Libya Tunisia Algeria Morocco and Mauritania Historically the 4 000 kilometer Mediterranean boundary has fluttered Population centers north of it in Europe have invited contact and Arab exploration mostly friendly though sometimes not Islands and peninsulas near the Arab coast have changed hands The islands of Sicily and Malta lie just a hundred kilometers east of the Tunisian city of Carthage which has been a point of contact with Europe since its founding in the first millennium BCE both Sicily and Malta at times have been part of the Arab World Just across the Strait of Gibraltar from Morocco regions of the Iberian peninsula were part of the Arab World throughout the Middle Ages extending the northern boundary at times to the foothills of the Pyrenees and leaving a substantial mark on local and wider European and Western culture The northern boundary of the African Arab world has also fluttered briefly in the other direction first through the Crusades and later through the imperial involvement of France Britain Spain and Italy Another visitor from northern shores Turkey controlled the east of the region for centuries though not as a colonizer Spain still maintains two small enclaves Ceuta and Melilla called Morocco Espanol along the otherwise Moroccan coast Overall this wave has ebbed though like the Arab expansion north it has left its mark The proximity of North Africa to Europe has always encouraged interaction and this continues with Arab immigration to Europe and European interest in the Arab countries today However population centers and the physical fact of the sea keeps this boundary of the Arab World settled on the Mediterranean coastline To the east the Red Sea defines the boundary between Africa and Asia and thus also between Arab Africa and Arab Western Asia This sea is a long and narrow waterway with a northwest tilt stretching 2 300 kilometers from Egypt s Sinai peninsula southeast to the Bab el Mandeb strait between Djibouti in Africa and Yemen in Arabia but on average just 150 kilometers wide Though the sea is navigable along its length historically much contact between Arab Africa and Arab Western Asia has been either overland across the Sinai or by sea across the Mediterranean or the narrow Bab al Mendeb strait From northwest to southeast Egypt Sudan and Eritrea form the African coastline with Djibouti marking Bab al Mendeb s African shore Southeast along the coast from Djibouti is Somalia but the Somali coast soon makes a 90 degree turn and heads northeast mirroring a bend in the coast of Yemen across the water to the north and defining the south coast of the Gulf of Aden The Somali coast then takes a hairpin turn back southwest to complete the horn of Africa For six months of the year the monsoon winds blow from up equatorial Somalia past Arabia and over the small Yemeni archipelago of Socotra to rain on India they then switch directions and blow back Hence the east and especially southeast coast boundary of Arab Africa has historically been a gateway for maritime trade and cultural exchange with both East Africa and the subcontinent The trade winds also help explain the presence of the Comoros islands an Arab African country off the coast of Mozambique near Madagascar in the Indian Ocean the southernmost part of the Arab World The southern boundary of Arab North Africa is the strip of scrubland known as the Sahel that crosses the continent south of the Sahara Arab Western Asia The Western Asian Arab region comprises the Arabian Peninsula most of the Levant excluding Cyprus and Israel most of Mesopotamia excluding parts of Turkey and Iran and the Persian Gulf region The peninsula is roughly a tilted rectangle that leans back against the slope of northeast Africa the long axis pointing toward Turkey and Europe See also World portalAfro Arabs Arab diaspora Arabic language influence on the Spanish language Arabic literature International Association of Arabic Dialectology List of Arab companies List of countries where Arabic is an official language List of Muslim states and dynasties MENA Muslim worldNotesGeneral Source unless otherwise specified Demographic Yearbook Table 3 Population by sex rate of population increase surface area and density PDF United Nations Statistics Division 2008 Archived PDF from the original on 24 December 2010 Retrieved 24 September 2010 a href Template Cite journal html title Template Cite journal cite journal a Cite journal requires journal help Entries in this table giving figures other than the figures given in this source are bracketed by asterisks in the Notes field and the rationale for the figure used are explained in the associated Note Sources Arab World Surface area indexmundi com a b Arab World Data World Bank Retrieved 6 May 2022 Population density people per sq km of land area Data World Bank GDP current US Data World Bank GNI per capita Atlas method current US Data World Bank a b c d e f g 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 Khan Zafarul Islam The Arab World an Arab perspective milligazette com Phillips Christopher 2012 Everyday Arab Identity The Daily Reproduction of the Arab World Routledge p 94 ISBN 978 1 136 21960 3 Mellor Noha Rinnawi Khalil Dajani Nabil Ayish Muhammad I 2013 Arab Media Globalization and Emerging Media Industries John Wiley amp Sons ISBN 978 0745637365 Majority 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Kronholm Tryggve 1993 Arab culture Reality or fiction In Palva Heikki Vikor Knut S eds The Middle East Unity and diversity Papers from the second Nordic conference on Middle Eastern studies Nordic proceedings in Asian studies Vol 5 Copenhagen Nordic Institute of Asian Studies ISBN 87 87062 24 0 Reader John 1997 Africa A Biography of the Continent New York Vintage ISBN 978 0 679 40979 3 Rejwan Nissim 1974 Nasserist ideology its exponents and critics New York Halsted Press ISBN 0 470 71628 2 Rinnawi Khalil 2006 Instant nationalism McArabism al Jazeera and transnational media in the Arab world Lanham Maryland University Press of America ISBN 978 0 7618 3439 7 Sullivan Earl L Ismael Jacqueline S eds 1991 Preface The contemporary study of the Arab world Edmonton Alberta The University of Alberta Press ISBN 0 88864 211 3 Saint Prot Charles 2003 French Policy toward the Arab World Abu Dhabi Emirates Center for Strategic Studies and Research ISBN 978 9948 00 336 6 Further readingAjl Max Imperialism and Class in the Arab World September 2016 Monthly Review Ayalon Amy 1987 Language and change in the Arab Middle East the evolution of modern political discourse Studies in Middle Eastern history Oxford University Press US ISBN 978 0 19 504140 8 Hourani Albert 1983 Arabic Thought in the Liberal Age 1798 1939 Rev with a new preface Cambridge Eng Cambridge University Press x 406 p ISBN 0 521 27423 0 pbk Tausch Arno A Look at International Survey Data About Arab Opinion 31 January 2014 A look at recent 2013 international survey data about Arab opinion Middle East Review of International Affairs Vol 17 No 3 Fall 2013 57 74 SSRN 2388627 Tausch Arno 2015 The political algebra of global value change General models and implications for the Muslim world with Almas Heshmati and Hichem Karoui 1st ed Nova Science Publishers New York ISBN 978 1 62948 899 8 External linksArab League Online INFOSAMAK Arab world ArabLand com Directories of all Arab world countries Araboo com Arab world directory Arab countries information WinArab Arab articles Carboun Information and resources relating to energy environment and sustainability in the Arab world Arab world travel guide from Wikivoyage Retrieved from https en wikipedia org w index php title Arab world amp oldid 1147731370, wikipedia, wiki, book, books, library,

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