Arab

/ar"euhb/, n.

1. a member of a Semitic people inhabiting Arabia and other countries of the Middle East.

2. a member of any Arabic-speaking people.

3. See Arabian horse.

4. Sometimes Offensive. a street peddler (esp. in Baltimore).

5. See street Arab.

adj.

6. of or pertaining to Arabs.

7. Arabian.

8. Arabic.

[1625-35; back formation from L Arabs (taken as pl.) < Gk Áraps Arabian, an Arabian or Arab]

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I

Any member of the Arabic-speaking peoples native to the Middle East and North Africa.

Before the spread of Islam in the 630s, the term referred to the largely nomadic Semitic peoples of the Arabian Peninsula; it came to apply to Arabic-speaking peoples from Africa's Mauritanian and Moroccan coasts east to Iraq and the Arabian Peninsula and south to The Sudan after their acceptance of Islam. Traditionally, some Arabs are desert-dwelling pastoral nomads (see Bedouin), whereas others live by oases and in small, isolated farming villages. While most Arabs are Muslims, some are Christian. The term has also been used in a political sense by Arab nationalists to describe a greater sociolinguistic or ethnic ideal ("the Arab nation"). See also Pan-Arabism.

II

(as used in expressions)

United Arab Republic

Arab Republic of Egypt

Socialist People's Libyan Arab Jamahiriyyah

Syrian Arab Republic

Arab League

League of Arab States

Arab Israeli wars

Saharan Arab Democratic Republic

Shatt al Arab

Arab Israeli War of 1967

United Arab Emirates

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▪ people

Arabic  singular masculine ʿArabī,  singular  feminine ʿArabīyah,  plural  ʿArab 

      one whose native language is Arabic. (See also Arabic language.) Before the spread of Islam and, with it, the Arabic language, Arab referred to any of the largely nomadic Semitic inhabitants of the Arabian Peninsula. In modern usage, it embraces any of the Arabic-speaking peoples living in the vast region from Mauritania, on the Atlantic coast of Africa, to southwestern Iran, including the entire Maghrib of North Africa, Egypt and The Sudan, the Arabian Peninsula, and Syria and Iraq.

      This diverse assortment of peoples defies physical stereotyping, because there is considerable regional variation. The early Arabs of the Arabian Peninsula were predominantly nomadic (nomadism) pastoralists who herded their sheep, goats, and camels through the harsh desert environment. Settled Arabs practiced date and cereal agriculture in the oases, which also served as trade centres for the caravans transporting the spices, ivory, and gold of southern Arabia and the Horn of Africa to the civilizations farther north. The distinction between the desert nomads, on the one hand, and town dwellers and agriculturists, on the other, still pervades much of the Arab world.

      Islam (Islāmic world), which developed in the west-central Arabian Peninsula in the early 7th century AD, was the religious force that united the desert subsistence nomads—the Bedouins—with the town dwellers of the oases. Within a century, Islam spread throughout most of the present-day Arabic-speaking (Arabic language) world, and beyond, from Central Asia to the Iberian Peninsula. Arabic, the language of the Islamic sacred scripture (the Qurʾān), was adopted throughout much of the Middle East and North Africa as a result of the rapidly established supremacy of Islam in those regions. Other elements of Arab culture, including the veneration of the desert nomad's life, were integrated with many local traditions. Arabs of today, however, are not exclusively Muslim; approximately 5 percent of the native speakers of Arabic worldwide are Christians, Druzes, Jews, or animists.

      Traditional Arab values were modified in the 20th century by the pressures of urbanization, industrialization, detribalization, and Western influence. Nearly half of Muslim Arabs live in cities and towns, where family and tribal ties tend to break down, where women, as well as men, have greater educational and employment opportunity, and where the newly emerging middle class of technicians, professionals, and bureaucrats has gained influence.

      The majority of Arabs continue to live in small, isolated farming villages, where traditional values and occupations prevail, including the subservience and home seclusion ( purdah) of women. While urban Arabs tend to identify themselves more by nationality than by tribe, village farmers venerate the pastoral nomad's way of life and claim kinship ties with the great desert tribes of the past and present. Nationalism and the change in standards of living that have been made possible by the expanded oil industry, however, have radically altered the nomadic life.

      The pastoral desert nomad, the traditional ideal of Arab culture, makes up barely 5 percent of the modern Arab population. Many of the remaining nomads have given up full-time subsistence pastoralism to become village agriculturists or stock breeders, or to find employment with oil companies or other employers in the towns and cities.

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