Arab identity

Arab identity is the objective or subjective conception of perceiving somebody as an Arab and as relating to being Arab. Like other cultural identities, it relies on a common culture, a traditional lineage, the common land in history, shared experiences including underlying conflicts and confrontations. These commonalities are regional and in historical contexts often tribal.
Arab identity is defined independently of religious identity, and pre-dates the spread of Islam and the earlier spread of Judaism and Christianity, with historically attested Arab Muslim tribes, Arab Christian tribes and Arab Jewish tribes. Arabs are a diverse group in terms of religious affiliations and practices. Most Arabs are Muslims, with a minority adhering to other faiths, largely Christianity, but also Druze and Baháʼí.
Arab identity can also be seen through a lens of national, regional or local identity. Throughout Arab history, there have been several major national trends in the Arab world. Pan-Arabism, for example, rejects the individual Arab states' existing sovereignty as artificial creations and calls for full Arab unity.

Origins and history

The word "Arab" first appears in the early 1st millennium BC, and remains in use until the Islamic era. However, the word evolves considerably over the course of pre-Islamic antiquity, and the evolution and meaning of the term before the rise of Islam continues to be debated.
In Near Eastern sources from the 1st millennium BC, "Arab" is neither an ethnic identifier, a synonym for nomadic or pastoralist groups, or a geographic label associated with the inhabitants of the Arabian Peninsula. Instead, it is an exonym and a socio-cultural identifier for various peoples across Syria, Mesopotamia, the Levant, the Sinai Peninsula, and Egypt, and it could have been used for settled farmers, urban elites, merchants, soldiers, and rulers, as well as pastoral nomads. The term was loosely used for groups of people perceived by Near Eastern sources as broadly sharing in their language and culture. With the ascendance of Greek and Roman sources, which increasingly attempt to systematize the world around them, any region where "Arabs" are found comes to be labeled "Arabia", producing multiple areas simultaneously labelled as "Arabia" across the Near East, far beyond the Peninsula itself. This habit among these sources produced a level of circular reasoning: once a region was labelled "Arabia", its inhabitants, in turn, were labelled as "Arabs", regardless of their own identities.
A more consequential shift occurred under Roman rule, when the Roman Empire annexed the Nabataean Kingdom and created, in its place, an administrative region known as Arabia Petraea in 106 AD. Afterwards, the word "Arab" partially was redefined as an administrative category, tied to residence in the new province, instead of a cultural identity. As a consequence, the term "Saracen" was invented for peoples formerly seen as "Arabs", but living outside of Arabia Petraea. Over time, Greeks and Romans increasingly associated "Arabs" with the incense trade, and acquired a general sense that "Arabs" were peoples living to the south of their own civilizations. As a result, since the Arabian Peninsula broadly fell to the south of Greco-Roman civilization, it in its entirety was misunderstood as "Arabia" over the course of time, even though South Arabians explicitly distinguished themselves from "Arabs" in their own inscriptions at the time. By late antiquity, the concept of Arabia as a unified peninsula inhabited by Arabs was thus largely a construct of Greek and Roman sources. Only much later, with the spread of Arabic through the Muslim conquests, did this geographical idea align with an indigenous criterion of Arab identity based on language.
In the early Islamic period, it was common to invoke "Arab" identity as denoting an elite conqueror status, particularly provided that conversion was uncommon in the first Islamic century. Later, over the course of history, the Arabization of non-Arab societies leading to the adoption of Arab identity with the spread of the Arabic language as well as Islamic religion and culture, took place throughout the Middle East and North Africa.

Ideology

Arab nationalism

is a nationalist ideology that asserts the Arabs are a nation and promotes the unity of Arab people. In its contemporary conception, it is the belief that the Arab people are a people united by language, culture, ethnicity, history, geography and interests, and that one Arab nation comprises the Arabs within its borders from the Atlantic Ocean to the Arabian Sea.
Many Arabs believe that they are an old nation, exhibiting pride, for example, based on Arabic poetry and other forms of Arabic literature. In the era of the spread of Islam, nationalism was manifested by the identification of Arabs as a distinct nation within Islamic countries. In the modern era, this idea was embodied by ideologies such as Nasserism and Ba'athism, which were common forms of nationalism in the Arab world, especially in the mid-twentieth century. Perhaps the most important form of creating such an Arab state was the establishment of the United Arab Republic between Egypt and Syria, although it was short-lived. To some extent, Arab nationalism gained a new popular appeal as a result of the Arab Spring of the 2010s, calling for Arab social unity, led by the people on the streets, not the authoritarian regimes that had installed the historic forms of nationalism.

Arab socialism

is a political ideology based on an amalgamation between Arab nationalism and socialism. Arab socialism differs from other socialist ideas prevalent in the Arab world. For many, including Michel Aflaq, one of its founders, Arab socialism was a necessary step towards the consolidation of Arab unity and freedoms, since the socialist system of ownership and development alone could overcome the remnants of colonialism in the Arab world.

Unity

Pan-Arabism

is an ideology espousing the unification of the countries of North Africa and Middle East from the Atlantic Ocean to the Arabian Sea, often referred to as the Arab world. The idea is based on the integration of some or all of the Arab countries into a single political and economic framework that removes the borders between the Arab states and establishes a strong economic, cultural and military state. Arab unity is an ideology that Arab nationalists see as a solution to the backwardness, occupation and oppression that the Arab citizens in all the individual states are suffering from.

Arab League

The Arab League, formally the League of Arab States is a regional organization of Arab countries in and around North Africa, the Middle East, the Horn of Africa and the Arabian Peninsula. It was formed in Cairo on 22 March 1945 with six members: Kingdom of Egypt, Kingdom of Iraq, Transjordan, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, and Syria. Its charter provides for coordination among member states in economic matters, including trade relations, communications, cultural relations, travel documents and permits, social relations and health.

Definition

An Arab can be defined as a member of a Semitic people, inhabiting much of the Middle East and North Africa. The ties that bind Arabs may be ethnic, linguistic, cultural, historical, nationalist, geographical, political, often also relating to religion and to cultural identity. In their long history and with many local variations, Arabs have developed their distinct customs, language, architecture, fine art, literature, music, cinema, dance, media, cuisine, dress, societies, and mythology.
According to both Judaism and Islam, Ishmael was the ancestor of the Ishmaelites and of the Arabs. Ishmael was the elder son of Abraham and the forefather of many prominent Arab tribes.

Homeland

The Arab world, formally the Arab homeland, also known as the Arab nation or the Arab states, currently consists of the 22 Arab countries: Algeria, Bahrain, Comoros, Djibouti, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Mauritania, Morocco, Oman, Palestine, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, Tunisia, United Arab Emirates and Yemen. They occupy an area stretching from the Atlantic Ocean in the west to the Arabian Sea in the east, and from the Mediterranean Sea in the north to the Horn of Africa and the Indian Ocean in the southeast. In 2019, the combined population of the Arab world was estimated at 423 million inhabitants.