What Are Arab ?
Arab :
Arabs are an ethnic group composed of individuals anthropologically different from each other, that 's identified by the links between other linguistic or cultural , spread over a vast area that stretches from Oman to Mauritania . This group includes both the descendants of ancient tribes of Arabia , and ethnic Arabized through the centuries, the Middle East and North Africa .
Arabs are among the Semites . The Diaspora Arab is a global diaspora estimated at between 30 and 50 million people spread over all continents and almost every country of the world . Areas with high concentrations are the Western Europe , the West Asia and North America .
Etymology :
The origin of the Arabic word is obscure, despite much research .
The Arabic word may derive from the Semitic root Abhar "move". But consider that the Arabic etymology the word derives from the Arabic verb "express" .
Aribi the word was found in an inscription Assyrian dating from 853 BC. AD King Shalmaneser III recounts a rebellion of Prince Gindibou the Aribi Around 530 BC. AD , the word is transcribed in several Arabaya Persian documents. The place name Arabia is transcribed into Greek by Herodotus . Thereafter all the Greek and Latin writers broaden the meaning designating the place and people by the Arabic word .
Or it means "man of the desert" or "the man who crossed the desert" in this sense, it represents the identity Bedouin , in the strict sense, that is to say all tribes of nomadic pastoralism in Saudi . This radical could also mean "the place where the sun sets" (see Erebus , the darkness), that is to say the West. Arab and Europe could come from the Semitic ereb, which means " sunset "(ie west) this assumption is no longer held today .
Definition :
The Arab identity may be based on one or more criteria.
Genealogy . Arab East is one that his ancestors in one of the tribes of Arabia. It was the definition used in medieval times, for example by Ibn Khaldun .
- Nationality . Arab East a citizen of one of 22 member countries of the Arab League with the exception of indigenous peoples of North Africa, who are Berber, with several dialects now grouped under the name of Tamazight, be inhabitant of a "supposed Arab" does not mean you're arabe.Les rock figures of the Ahaggar and Tassili in southern Algeria confirms that the language and that people did exist before the Arabs in North Africa, so that the total number of Arabs must be readjusted due to the existence of Berbers, Copts, Syriacs and Kurds in those countries. It consists of about 350 million people , but excludes the Diaspora . It includes linguistic minorities (Copts, Syrians, Berbers) whose languages are taught in the official language ( Modern Standard Arabic ) of the State.
- Language . Is Arabic a person whose mother tongue is the Arab . The local dialects, Arabic dialect called, does not fully understand them. This definition reduces the number of Arabic speakers. According to the linguist Muhammad Benrabah, some Arabic speakers do not identify with these définitions.Ce which means although it did exist other languages completely different from those in the Arab countries.
According Sati al Housri , a father of Arab nationalism , "Arabic is one who speaks Arabic, which means that Arab and Arabic words. "
By extension, the term refers to any person from an ethnic group that has adopted (or for which was imposed) the Semitic language . Such people may have no other relationship with the Saudi , than live in a country that was annexed during the Arab expansion ( Syria , Lebanon and Palestine ) or live in a Member State of the Arab League , which includes States with majority non-Arab, as Djibouti , or most non-Arabic speaking like Somalia , the Comoros and Djibouti , or Arabic-speaking majority but where there are strong non-Arab minorities such as Sudan .
The Arabs in Indonesia are identified as such, but the census showed that the majority of them do not speak Arabic or know it only as the liturgical language and not as everyday language.
The Arabized tribes :
After the expansion of Islam in the seventh century , some territories arabisent gradually. The Arab-Muslim culture is spreading at the expense of Greek or Syriac including the Middle East ( Lebanon , Syria , Palestine , Jordan and Iraq ) and also in North Africa ( Egypt , North Africa and Sudan ).
Local people speak an Arabic , available in groups of dialects.
For example, the Maltese speak Maltese , a language which initially is a dialect of Arabic dialects of Tunisian close, but they do not consider themselves Arab. Indeed, the Maltese nationalist movement in the nineteenth century, built a mythical Phoenician origin of language and nation to counter the Maltese supporters of the annexation of Malta to Italy in the unification process, the latter using particular argument that Arabic was the "language of Muslims."
There are also Jews for whom the Arabic term "Arab Jews" is not used, except sometimes to refer to Arab tribes of the Jewish faith at the time pre-Islamic or early Islamic era ( AH ), or an ideological sense, to denote eg Jewish non- Zionists consider themselves as Arab-Jewish, such Abraham Serfaty in Morocco or Ilan Halevi , a member of the Organization for the Liberation of Palestine .
Number of Somali and Djibouti are Arabic second language is official language in their country.
The Berber people of North Africa, distinct cultures and languages specific ( Tamazight , chleuh ...) are not considered Arab. Arabic is also strongly rejected by some of the Berber people who regard it as a language of political oppression and cultural .
Arab Stand :
The original population of the Arabian Desert and extending from Mesopotamia until Syria is native Semite , but his ethnicity is even subject to much debate. In fact, the presence of these Bedouin is very old, since one finds mention of their lives in Assyrian and Babylonian texts dating from the ninth century BC. AD but also in the Bible. According to it, they would from a split of Abraham's son, is their mythical ancestor Ishmael , brother of Isaac mythical ancestor of the Hebrews.
Historian Marc Bergé wrote:
"The Arabs made their first appearance in history in 854 BC: Arabic Gindibu supported Bin Idri of Damascus (Ben Hadad II of the Bible ) in his country's leading camel miles on the occasion of Aribi the battle of Qarqar [...] Perhaps the camp Gindibu Was located southeast of Damascus. Certainly the elements Bedouins of the Arabian peninsula - probably called either Aram or Haribu Eber - were to be installed initially in the region stretching between Syria and Mesopotamia, and who was, with Syria the cradle of the oldest Semitic . "
Present in the Arabian Peninsula and the Arab-Syrian desert to the seventh century, they then expanded to the rest of the Middle Easts, to the North Africa and the Iberian Peninsula carried by their faith in the Islam was sent to Andalusia.
Stories ancient and medieval :
According to Ibn Khaldun , the Arabs are composed of four separate groups, Ariba , the Mostaâriba , the Tabia lil Aarab and Mostaâdjem . According to him , the Arab genealogists separate tribes of their nation in two categories. The first drops of Qahtan and one of Ishmael . Khehlan Himyer and are the 1st category. Moder and Rebia Nizar b belong to the 2nd category.
According to Tabari , a Muslim historian, Eve lived in Jeddah and Adam lived alone in a mountain Serandib. This mountain has been identified by Ibn Battuta and is now known peak of Adam , he was sent the first time in Hindustan . Adam and Eve went through the current Saudi Arabia . Adam made his pilgrimage and he returned to his new home, which is Mecca current .
Tabari traced Ishmael , through Abraham and Noah, to Adam .
The precepts of Adam and psalms were written in Arabic and they are kept in the Vatican . Another version is in Syriac .
Other Muslim philosophers like to say that the language of Adam was Arabic, but this was disputed by Ibn Jinni in the tenth century .
The mother of Ishmael is Hagar , an Egyptian . The father of Ishmael was Abraham . The Egyptian king had four hundred women, Hagar. It offers Sarah Abraham's wife to choose two girls among these women. Sarah chooses one of them, Agar who was ranked higher than others and who took a liking to Sarah .
Arab-Muslim conquests :
Before the start of the Muslim conquest, the Arab tribes were essentially nomadic, with the notable exception of few areas where the Arabs had developed urban civilizations, such as south of the Arabian Peninsula , in Mesopotamia , the Aramaic territory, where they had created so many small kingdoms ( Palmyra , Petra , Hatra , kingdom Lakhmide of Al-Hira , kingdom Ghassanid , etc..).
This is to Yathrib, the future Medina , that Islam is beginning to establish his power (see Muslim and Jewish tribes of Yathrib .
After the conquest of the Arabian Peninsula by Islam , the Arabs conquered the seventh and eighth century the neighboring regions of the Middle East , Asia Minor, the North Africa where they founded Kairouan first Muslim city of Maghreb , etc..
After a quick conversion to Islam, an Arab army conquered and amazighet of Spain on behalf of the Caliph Umayyad in Damascus by sea in that part of the current island of Gibraltar . All cities fell into the hands of the Umayyads. The Amazigh outnumbered Arabs and Jews in Andalusia. Several dynasties have persisted, but they ended up falling. The only dynasty that has survived is the Arab dynasty of Nasrid to Granada , it was the last to fall in 1492. At the same time, the discovery of America was begun.
Muslims ruled for nearly eight centuries (from 711 to 1492) in Andalusia . They also conquered a part of Portugal . The Moors were expelled from the Iberian Peninsula in 1609 under Philip III [ref. incomplete] . Part of them settled in France [ref. needed] and many are Christians. The rest goes to North Africa [ref. incomplete] . Some authorities in Andalusia agreed with the three religious communities Christian, Jewish and Muslim. From 1492, the Spanish American broadcast techniques and food taken from the Moorish culture (irrigation techniques, sugar, coffee, etc.). .
A bridgehead Muslim remains in Provence in the Maures hills in the south of France until the end of the tenth century .
The Sicilian was also under Muslim rule for nearly 250 years and most of its inhabitants converted to Islam until the Christian armies and Norman do not recover the island, founding the kingdom of Sicily . Islamization and Arabization that this was even more extreme than immigration Berber important followed the famine that ravaged the North Africa 1004-1005, 1040 .
The Banu Hilal , a tribe of Quraysh , who came from Egypt invaded North Africa in the mid eleventh century .
The Middle East and North Africa will be conquered by various dynasties and empires foreigners (Turks, Spaniards, Portuguese, English, French, etc..) thereafter.
Inheritance and transmission of classical learning :
It is commonly accepted that they are Christians Syriacs who translated most of the texts of Greek authors in Arabic and commented that the versions of Aristotle , of Plato and others have arrived in Europe with annotations of Muslim thinkers who were well contributed in some way the movement of ideas without having been provided the exclusive importers. The Latinization of the name of these commentators show their prestige among European scholars : Ibn Rushd became Averroes, Ibn Sina Avicenna, Ibn Tufayl Abubacer, Ibn Bajjah Avempace, Hunayn ibn Ishaq Johannitius ...
Islam has quickly conquered the Sassanid Persia and most of the Christian East where Christians and Jews are given the status of dhimmis subject to tax. The conquerors also require their tributaries intellectual input that will feed this infant civilization by tapping into the treasures of ancient thought. Syria deveint the main center of Hellenic thought, after Justinian had closed the schools of Athens. With the exception of a few works translated directly from Greek into Arabic, Greek books were translated into Syriac , a late form of Aramaic, in a movement that grew louder after the Muslim conquest .
The Caliphs Abbasid created in the early ninth century a translation workshop called Bayt al Hikma ( House of Wisdom ) in Baghdad and send caravans to Byzantium to buy Greek manuscripts with gold. This movement includes translation works as medicine, logic and philosophy of Greek and Persian literature or Indian astronomy, synthesized through Islam, are the emergence of a new philosophical and scientific Arabic culture called the adab , imparting a new impetus to knowledge in general and science in particular .
Among the famous translators can be mentioned in the ninth century physician Hunayn ibn Ishaq which transcribes medical corpus of Hippocrates and Galen , as a basis in the Canon of Medicine of Avicenna himself to be translated into Latin and shall prevail over five centuries. Other important personalities are mentioned as al-Farabi which gives an interpretation of Aristotle and Plato harmonizing the two philosophies or the scholar al-Biruni , which describes the history of the Universe in the Greek tradition. Finally, the work of Averroes , philosopher, theologian and Islamic scholar of the twelfth century , commentator of Aristotle's works, raises heated debates that are as many supporters as detractors and this will influence in the medieval Europe that speaks of Averroes .
Translations of Aristotle and other ancient writers win the Spanish Saracen and Sicily where we actively translated works from Arabic into Latin. Toledo , back to the Arabs in 1085, became a place of fruitful contacts between culture Arab and Christian world from 1130 to 1150, the Archbishop Raymond Agen employs mediators Jews who, in addition to know Hebrew, Arabic, Castilian, Latin or Christian scholars such as Gerard of Cremona . Thus the ancient authors and comments in the West Arab penetrate deeply influencing the minds of Christian writers such as Albertus Magnus and Thomas Aquinas .
This theory is now partially challenged by historians such as Jacques Heers or Sylvain Gouguenheim which, going against the grain of contemporary research , explained in a book much criticized by his peers, Aristotle at Mont Saint-Michel , only the transmission side there existed an Arab chain of direct translations from Greek to Latin, which Mont-Saint-Michel was the center in early twelfth century, thanks to Jacques Venice . The historian, however, confirms the recovery of many Arab-Muslim elements of the culture or know Greek but considers that the thought of Aristotle there was no influence in the areas of politics and law, at least the eighth e in the twelfth century .
Pour Gabriel Martinez-Gros, professeur à l'université de Paris X , « si le Moyen Âge occidental minimise l'apport des Arabes, c'est qu'il cherche avant tout à renouer avec un patrimoine antique qu'il tient pour sien ; l'Islam médiéval quant à lui exalte une Grèce antique sans parenté avec l'Empire byzantin »
traditional affiliations:
According to the Biblical and Koranic tradition, Arabs are a group of Semitic tribes strains (that is to say a descendant of Shem) and Hamitic.
Some descendants of Qahtan (Yoktan), son of Eber, called "al-ʿ ʿ Arabu'l-Ariba," (that is to say "Arab Arabs" or "Pure Arabs") or "mut ʿ ARIB." The pre-Islamic Arabic poems evoke different Arab tribes. It is through these poems that have crossed the centuries through oral tradition as it is today the two major tribes founders of Arab culture: 'Abs and Doubian. Other tribes later herein, the Ishmaelites - which has produced the Banu Quraysh according to Arab tradition, descended from Ishmael, the eldest son of the patriarch Abraham, who settled in the country. His mother Hagar gave him an Egyptian wife (a descendant of Ham by Mistraïm therefore, according to the Bible). They were called by the first "must ʿ ARIB" (مستعرب), that is to say, "Arabists."
Tradition asserts the existence of ancient Arab tribes disappeared at the time of the previous two, called "Al-Baida Arabu'l", that is to say, "Arabs disappeared".
