Arab

Language: de en es et fi fr hu cs it lt nl no pl pt sk sl sv

An Arab () is any member of the Semitic speaking group of people whose cultural, linguistic, and in some cases, ancestral origins trace back to the tribes of the Arabian Peninsula. The Arabic language and culture began to spread in the Middle East in the 2nd century with ethnically Arab Christians such as the Ghassanids, and even earlier with ethnically Arab Jewish tribes. Wide proliferation in the Middle East and North Africa began after the advent of Islam in the 7th century and the ensuing Arab Muslim expansionism. This resulted in the cultural assimilation of the region's indigenous Semitic and non-Semitic peoples of non-Arab origin, usually together with their Islamization. Islamized but non-Arabized peoples outside the region are part of the Muslim World, not the traditionally secular Arab World. Many other views of who is Arab have been offered.^[1]