History of the Arabs

For other uses, see History of the Arabs (disambiguation).
Queen Zenobia, c. 240 – c. 274 CE) was a third-century queen of the Palmyrene Empire in Syria. One of several ancient female rulers in antiquity of Arab origin. Depicted as empress on the obverse of an antoninianus (272 CE).

The recorded history of the Arabs begins in the mid-9th century BCE, which is the earliest known attestation of the Old Arabic language. Tradition holds that Arabs descend from Ishmael, the son of Abraham.[1] The Syrian Desert is the home of the first attested "Arab" groups,[2][3] as well as other Arab groups that spread in the land and existed for millennia.[4]

Before the expansion of the Rashidun Caliphate (632–661), the term "Arab" referred to any of the largely nomadic or settled Arabic tribes from the Arabian Peninsula, Levant, North and Lower Mesopotamia.[5] Today, "Arab" refers to a variety of large numbers of people whose native regions form the Arab world due to the spread of Arabs and the Arabic language throughout the region during the early Muslim conquests of the 7th and 8th centuries.[6] The Arabs forged the Rashidun (632–661), Umayyad (661–750) and the Abbasid (750–1258) caliphates, creating one of the largest land empires in history[7] reaching southern France in the west, China in the east, Anatolia in the north, and Sudan in the south. In 1517, the Mamluk Sultanate was conquered by the Ottoman Empire, which ruled much of the Arab world. In First World War, it was defeated and dissolved,[8] and its territories were partitioned, forming the modern Arab states.[9] After the adoption of the Alexandria Protocol in 1944, the Arab League was founded on 22 March 1945.[10] The Charter of the Arab League endorsed the principle of an Arab homeland while respecting the individual sovereignty of its member states.[11]

  1. ^ Fredrick E. Greenspahn (2005). "Ishmael". In Lindsay Jones (ed.). Encyclopedia of Religion. Vol. 7. Macmillan Reference USA. pp. 4551–4552. ISBN 978-0-02-865740-0. ISHMAEL, or, in Hebrew, Yishmaʿeʾl; eldest son of Abraham. Ishmael's mother was Agar, an Egyptian slave-girl whom Sarah had as her maid and eventually donated to Abraham because this royal couple were aged and childless but they were unaware then of God's plan and Israel; in accordance with Mesopotamian law, the offspring of such a union would be credited to Sarah (Gn. 16:2). The name Yishmaʿeʾl is known from various ancient Semitic cultures and means "God has hearkened," suggesting that a child so named was regarded as the answer to a request. Ishmael was circumcised at the age of thirteen by Abraham and expelled with his mother Agar at the instigation of Sarah, Abraham's wife, who wanted to ensure that Isaac would be Abraham's heir (Gn. 21). In the New Testament, Paul uses this incident to symbolize the relationship between Judaism and Christianity (Gal. 4:21–31). In the Genesis account, God blessed Ishmael, promising that he would be the founder of a great nation and a "wild ass of a man" always at odds with others (Gn. 16:12). So Abraham rose up in the morning, and taking bread and a bottle of water, put it upon her shoulder, and delivered the boy, and sent her away. And she departed, and wandered in the wilderness of Bersabee. [15] And when the water in the bottle was spent, she cast the boy under one of the trees that were there. Genesis chapter 21: [16] And she went her way, and sat over against him a great way off as far as a bow can carry, for she said: I will not see the boy die: and sitting over against, she lifted up her voice and wept. [17] And God heard the voice of the boy: and an angel of God called to Agar from heaven, saying: What art thou doing, Agar? fear not: for God hath heard the voice of the boy, from the place wherein he is. [18] Arise, take up the boy, and hold him by the hand: for I will make him a great nation. [19] And God opened her eyes: and she saw a well of water, and went and filled the bottle, and gave the boy to drink. [20] And God was with him: and he grew, and dwelt in the wilderness, and became a young man, an archer. [21] And he dwelt in the wilderness of Pharan, and his mother took a wife for him out of the land of Egypt. [22] At the same time Abimelech, and Phicol the general of his army said to Abraham: God is with thee in all that thou dost. [23] Swear therefore by God, that thou wilt not hurt me, nor my posterity, nor my stock: but according to the kindness that I have done to thee, thou shalt do to me, and to the land wherein thou hast lived a stranger. [24] And Abraham said: I will swear. [25] And he reproved Abimelech for a well of water, which his servants had taken away by force. [26] And Abimelech answered: I knew not who did this thing: and thou didst not tell me, and I heard not of it till today. [27] And Abraham took sheep and oxen and gave them to Abimelech: and both of them made a league. [28] And Abraham set apart seven ewe lambs of the flock. [29] And Abimelech said to him: What mean these seven ewe lambs which thou hast set apart? [30] But he said: Thou shalt take seven ewe lambs at my hand: that they may be a testimony for me, that I dug this well. [31] Therefore that place was called Bersabee: because there both of them did swear. [32] And they made a league for the well of oath. [33] And Abimelech, and Phicol the general of his army arose and returned to the land of the Palestines. But Abraham planted a grove in Bersabee, and there called upon the name of the Lord God eternal. [34] And he was a sojourner in the land of the Palestines many days. [Genesis 21:1-34]Douay Rheims Bible. He is credited with twelve sons, described as "princes according to their tribes" (Gn. 25:16), representing perhaps an ancient confederacy. The Ishmaelites, vagrant traders closely related to the Midianites, were apparently regarded as his descendants. The fact that Ishmael's wife and mother are both said to have been Egyptian suggests close ties between the Ishmaelites and Egypt. According to Genesis 25:17, Ishmael lived to the age of 137. Islamic tradition tends to ascribe a larger role to Ishmael than does the Bible. He is considered a prophet and, according to certain theologians, the offspring whom Abraham was commanded to sacrifice (although surah Judaism has generally regarded him as wicked, although repentance is also ascribed to him. According to some rabbinic traditions, his two wives were Aisha and Fatima, whose names are the same as those of Muhammad's wife and daughter Both Judaism and Islam see him as the ancestor of Arab peoples. Bibliography A survey of the Bible's patriarchal narratives can be found in Nahum M. Sarna's Understanding Genesis (New York, 1966). Postbiblical traditions, with reference to Christian and Islamic views, are collected in Louis Ginzberg's exhaustive Legends of the Jews, 2d ed., 2 vols., translated by Henrietta Szold and Paul Radin (Philadelphia, 2003). Frederick E. Greenspahn (1987 and 2005)
  2. ^ "Arabian Peninsula". Britannica Student Encyclopedia (A-Z Set). Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. January 2012. p. 156. ISBN 978-1-61535-557-0.
  3. ^ Hoyland, Robert G. (2001). Arabia and the Arabs. Routledge. ISBN 0-203-76392-0.
  4. ^ MacArthur, John F. (15 December 2001). Terrorism, Jihad, and the Bible. Thomas Nelson Inc. ISBN 978-1-4185-1897-4.
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  6. ^
    • Ruthven, Albert Hourani; with a new afterword by Malise (2010). A history of the Arab peoples (1st Harvard Press pbk. ed.). Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. ISBN 978-0-674-05819-4.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
    • "HISTORY OF MIGRATION". www.historyworld.net.
    • Power, Bethany G. "The Emergence and Expansion of Islam to 1500". University of Massachusetts. Archived from the original on 3 September 2016.
    • "History of the Arabs (book)". Historyworld.net.
    • Lewis, Bernard Ellis & Churchill, Buntzie Ellis (2008). Islam: The Religion and the People. Pearson Prentice Hall. p. 137. ISBN 978-0-13-271606-2. Retrieved 21 August 2017. At the time of the Prophet's birth and mission, the Arabic language was more or less confined to Arabia, a land of deserts, sprinkled with oases. Surrounding it on land on every side were the two rival empires of Persia and Byzantium. The countries of what now make up the Arab world were divided between the two of them—Iraq under Persian rule, Syria, Palestine, and North Africa part of the Byzantine Empire. They spoke a variety of different languages and were for the most part Christians, with some Jewish minorities. Their Arabization and Islamization took place with the vast expansion of Islam in the decades and centuries following the death of the Prophet in 632 CE. The Aramaic language, once dominant in the Fertile Crescent, survives in only a few remote villages and in the rituals of the Eastern churches. Coptic, the language of Christian Egypt before the Arab conquest, has been entirely replaced by Arabic except in the church liturgy. Some earlier languages have survived, notably Kurdish in Southwest Asia and Berber in North Africa, but Arabic, in one form or another, has in effect become the language of everyday speech as well as of government, commerce, and culture in what has come to be known as "the Arab world."
  7. ^ * "Islam, The Arab Empire Of The Umayyads". history-world.org. Archived from the original on 2014-12-15. Retrieved 2017-12-16.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: unfit URL (link)
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  9. ^
    • L., Rogan, Eugene (1 January 2004). Frontiers of the state in the late Ottoman Empire: Transjordan, 1850–1921. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-89223-6. OCLC 826413749.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
    • Schsenwald, William L. "The Vilayet of Syria, 1901–1914: A Re-Examination of Diplomatic Documents As Sources." Middle East Journal (1968), Vol 22, No. 1, Winter: p. 73.
  10. ^ Arab League formed — History.com This Day in History — 3/22/1945. History.com. Retrieved on 28 April 2014.
  11. ^ * MacDonald, Robert W. (8 December 2015). The League of Arab States: A Study in Dynamics of Regional Organization. Princeton University Press. ISBN 978-1-4008-7528-3.