Arab

At the gates of Petra

The origin of the Arabic word remains obscure, despite extensive research . According Toufic Fahd, the radical arab, in Arabic , means the desert and is a word Hebrew "Arabah" . 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 the prince 's Gindibou Aribi . Around 530 BC. AD , the word is transcribed in several Arabaya Persian documents. The place name Arabia is transcribed into Greek by Herodotus. Subsequently all Greek and Latin writers expand the meaning designating the place and the 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 the tribes nomads of pastoralism in Arabia ^{Definitions of}

In blue: countries where Arabic is an official language

The Arab identity can 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. Is an Arab citizen of the 22 member countries of the Arab League. It consists of approximately 350 million people , but excludes the Diaspora. It includes linguistic minorities (the 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 Arabic. Local dialects, known Arabic dialect, not understand them fully. This definition greatly reduces the number of Arabic speakers. According to the linguist Benrabah Mohammed, Arabic-speaking people do not recognize themselves in these definitions.

According Sati al Housri , a father of Arab nationalism , "Arabic is the one who speaks Arabic, which means that Arab and Arabic words. "

Uses exonyms the Arabic term

The name is often used to refer to anyone from the Middle East or North Africa whose mother tongue is influenced by local dialect of Arabic. Thus, neither the Turks nor the Iranians nor the Kurds nor the Berbers are not Arabs, they speak different languages from Arabic.

By extension, the term refers to any person from an ethnic group that adopted the Semitic language. Such persons may have no other link with the Saudi , than to live in a country which was annexed during the Arab expansion ( Syria , Lebanon and Palestine ) or live in a Member State of the Arab League , which includes States to non-Arab majority, as Djibouti , or mostly non-Arabic speaker like Somalia , the Comoros and Djibouti , or Arabic-speaking majority but where there are strong non-Arab minorities like the Sudan.

The Arabized tribes

After the expansion of Islam in the ^seventh century , some jurisdictions s'arabisent gradually. The Arab-musulumane spreads including the Middle East ( Lebanon , Syria , Palestine , Jordan and Iraq ) and North Africa ( Egypt , North Africa and Sudan ).

Local people speak a Arabic , broken down into groups of dialects.

non-Arabic speaking Arabs

The Arabs in Indonesia are ethnic groups separate, identified as such but the census showed that the majority of them do not speak Arabic or do know that as a liturgical language and not as everyday language.

Arabic speaking non-Arab

Jews of Morocco

The Maltese speak Maltese , a language which initially is an Arabic dialect close Tunisian dialects, but they do not consider themselves Arab. Indeed, the Maltese Nationalist Movement in the nineteenth ^century, built a mythical Phoenician origin of language and the nation to counter the Maltese supporters of the annexation of Malta to Italy in the process of unification, 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 and early Islamic times ( AH ), or an ideological sense, to designate such Jewish non- Zionists consider themselves as Jewish-Arab, for example Abraham Serfaty in Morocco or Ilan Halevi , a member of the Organization for the Liberation of Palestine.

Number of Somali and Djibouti have a second language is Arabic language in their country.

Among populations Berber country whose official language is Arabic, there are identity movements Berber ( Amazigh Democratic Party in Morocco, Movement for Autonomy of Kabylia and Citizen Movement of aarchs in Kabylie, Algeria) who advocate the recognition of the Berber identity. The Berber people of North Africa, the distinct cultures and languages clean ( Tamazight , chleuh , ...) are not considered Arabs. The Arabic language is also strongly rejected by some of the Berber people who see it as a language of political oppression and cultural .

Arab stand

Arab family from Ramallah in 1905.

Portrait of women of the Ouled Nail tribe Arab from Algeria

The original population of the Arabian Desert and extending from Mesopotamia until Syria is native Semitic but ethnicity itself is subject to much debate. In fact, the presence of these Bedouin populations is very old, since found 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 originate from a splitting of the son of Abraham, their ancestor being mythical Ishmael , brother of Isaac mythical ancestor of the Hebrews.

Historian Marc Berge 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 at Ariba the battle of Qarqar . "

Present in the Arabian Peninsula and the Arab-Syrian desert to ^the seventh century, they then expanded to the rest of the Middle East, to the North Africa and the Iberian Peninsula brought by their faith in the Islam was sent to Andalusia.

Origin

In the mythology of the Arabian Peninsula, the Arabs of the south have ancestor Qahtan and Arabs in the north have ancestor Adnan.

Ancient and medieval tales

According to Ibn Khaldun , the Arabs are formed of four separate groups, Ariba , the Mostariba the Tabia lil Aarab and Mostadjem . According to him , genealogists separate Arab tribes of their nation in two categories. The first drops of Qahtan and one of Ishmael . Khehlan Himi and are ^the 1st category. Moder and Nizar Rebia b belong to ^the 2nd category.

According to Tabari , a Muslim historian, Eve lived in Jiddah and Adam lived alone in a mountain Serndib. This mountain has been identified by Ibn Battuta and is now known peak of Adam , he was sent first in the Hindustan. Adam and Eve passed by the current Saudi Arabia. Adam made his pilgrimage and he returned to his new home, which is Mecca today .

Adam is a word that means man in Arabic after Louis Edward Gauttier du Lys d'Arc .

Tabari traced Ishmael , through Abraham and Noah, Adam.

Psalms and precepts of Adam were written in Arabic and they are kept at the Vatican. Another version in Syriac .

Other Muslim philosophers 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 the women. Sarah chooses one of them, Hagar who was ranked higher than others and who took a liking to Sarah .

The Science

Geographical distribution of pre-Roman languages Semitic.

The homo sapiens immigrated to Saudi 60 ^th millennium BC. AD and became sedentary in the region of Arabia Felix .

It was in the Middle East , in areas of the Fertile Crescent that the period Neolithic appears. The man became sedentary to 13 ^th millennium BC. BC and developed agriculture and manufactures instruments. The first villages in the world are born in Arabia. They called Mallaha and Mureybat .

History

Mythology

According to the texts Bible or the Qur'an , Ibrahim (as Muslims) and Abraham (according to Christians , the Hebrew , etc..) is the ancestor of Arab people, he had Ishmael as a son who is considered the second patriarch of Arabs. Ibrahim has grandfather Shem (Bible) son of Noah (patriarch).

Antiquity

According Ctesias at the time of the Phoenicians , the Berosus consisted of Chaldeans and Arabs. The Arab king at that time was Arieus , he made war against Ninus , head of Babylon and Nineveh . According to Ferd Hoefer, an Arab dynasty had occupied Babylon in 1400 BC. Cusan - Risataim a madainite (tribe that belongs to the Ishmaelites ) was the king of Mesopotamia. Many peoples (Phoenicians, Hebrews) were submitted to the king. Ismailis occupied part of Mesopotamia and much of the Saudi. The war between the Hebrews and Cusan - Risataim because of Yahweh (God of the Near East). The Hebrews have denigrated this god and began to worship Baalim and Astratoh. In the end, the Jews offered their submission to Cusan Risataim-eight years .

• In South

The language of the South is different from northern peninsula of Arabia. The South was in decline after the successive fall of Kingdom of Sheba , which lasted for millennia. The Himyarites are the last rulers of this region. Dhu Nuwas was the last king of the dynasty in the late ^fifth century, he converted to Judaism and punish Christians because of the persecution of the Byzantines. The Ethiopians, most Christians take the region. Around 575, the Persians made a foray. The dominance of the Ethiopians and Persians was ephemeral. The society was highly developed in comparison to others. The inhabitants are sedentary, skilled in the construction of dam and agriculture. They produced and exported spices, myrrh, incense, herbs, etc.., Part of the world. The roads were successful during the time of peace (agreement signed between the Arabs and the Romans at the time of the Roman emperor and Arab Philip the Arab ). The Yemen was a monarchical society and religion was polytheistic. Several inscriptions found in the region suggest that part of the population could write .

• Central and North

These regions were influenced by culture Aramaic Hellenized. The commercial tracks were laid. The Nabataeans founded their kingdom and the city of Petra was the capital. Trajan embodies a Roman province in northern Nabatne. From 244 to 249, Philip the Arab led across the province. In the southern Syria was known as the Palmyra , Odenathus ("Udhayna) was the first ruler and his wife Zenobia ("Zayneb") replaced him. Aurlien takes the region as almost the entire population was nomadic or semi- nomad. The story remains gloomy about the other dynasties Lihyan and Thamud. Of the markings are the existence of the two countries. The Qur'an mentions Thamud. In 384, the peace treaty between the Romans and the Sassanid stopped the wars in the region. This peace lasted until 502. Byzantines and Persians practiced roads in the region were safe .

From the ^fourth century and ^sixth century century, the region is deteriorating. The Byzantines and the Sassanid them are disinterested. Arab society is still tribal. The livestock was important for survival, sometimes the Bedouin Arabs attacked the caravans sedentary. The Arab tribes had had an elected leader and a board member of the same family (Ahl al Bayt) (people of the house). The religion of the tribes was the polydemonism .

• Mecca

The city met the great merchants of the tribe of Quraysh. The latter concluded treaties with the Byzantines, the Ethiopians, Sassanian, etc.. Mecca was a trading city. Directed all his chiefs through a council (Majlis) .

Middle Ages

Arab-Muslim conquests

The Alhambra , partial view from the Mirador de San Nicolas, it was built by Nasrid

Canvas Gustave Boulanger An Arab horseman

Before the start of the Muslim conquest, the Arab tribes were essentially nomadic, with the notable exception of a few areas where the Arabs had developed urban civilizations, as in the southern Arabian Peninsula , in Mesopotamia , the Aramaic territory, where they had created so many little kingdoms ( Palmyra , Petra , Hatra , kingdom Lakhmids of Hira , kingdom Ghassanids , etc..).

It is in Yathrib, the future Medina , that Islam began to establish his authority (see e = "Muslim and Jewish tribes of Yathrib"> Muslim and Jewish tribes in Yathrib.

Map of the history of the expansion of Islam.

The Great Mosque of Kairouan , raised by the Arab conqueror Ibn Nafi Oqba from 670, is the first mosque in the Muslim West. It is located at Kairouan in Tunisia.

After the conquest of the Arabian Peninsula by Islam , the Arabs conquered ^the seventh and ^eighth century neighboring regions of the Middle East , Asia Minor, the North Africa where they founded Kairouan first Muslim city of Maghreb . A part of them settled in France

A bridgehead Muslim remains in Provence in the Maures mountains , in southern France until the late 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 does not recover the island, founding the kingdom of Sicily. Islamization and Arabization that this was even more extreme than immigration Berber followed the major famines 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 many dynasties and empires Aliens (Ottomans, Spaniards, Portuguese, English, French, etc..) thereafter.

Religions

Prehistory

The Arabs were companies that adopt the totemism in some animals .

Antiquity

Yahweh (God of the Near East) was the god for the Arab Ishmaelites dynasty in Babylon in 1400 BC. AD

The Pagan Arab existed long ago. There were several pre-Islamic religions among Arabs . Specialists point out three important groups in southern Arabia, Central and Northern. The Qur'an reveals several deities of this period ( Allat , Hubel, Quzeh, Al Lat (woman), Al Ozza, Wadd (Love), Amm , Yagt, Nasr, etc. . The Arabs were pagan. There was cult of the dead among the Arabs, but it is poorly understood. The worship of the ancients was fairly widespread among Arab nomadic sedentary. The Arabs were visits to shrines and rituals were . The most important thing that the Ka'ba was part of sacred rituals and visits among the Arabs before Muhammad .

Some researchers speak of Arabs animist . Several Arabs were Christians before the advent of Islam. The Arabs converted to Judaism were scattered in the region, they were to Yathrib ( Medina ) and were farmers and craftsmen .

Middle Age

The Islam is a religion monotheistic professed by Muhammad in Arabia ⁱⁿ the seventh century, whose followers are called Muslims. After Muhammad's death, there will be four caliphs who commanded the believers. Subsequently, three great empires were created, the Umayyads , the Fatimids and the Abbasids each with their own practice of Islam.

Present time

Most Arabs embraced Islam Sunni. The Arabs are a minority in the Muslim population. The six non-Arab countries the most important in terms of predominantly Muslim population, are the Indonesia , the Pakistan , the Bangladesh , the Nigeria , the Turkey and Iran.

There are also about fifteen million Arab Christians in the Arab-Muslim geographical area: in Egypt (8-16%) even if they are not really Arabs but

Among the Arabs of Brazil that make up about 7% of the population . The Arab community in any of 8 million , the Christians of Greater Syria came to Brazil in 1837. In total there are 17 million Arabs in Latin America .

The United States , the Arab community has about 3.5 million, of which approximately 63% of members are Christians and Muslims 24% . Community that settled early in the ^twentieth century from Syria, Lebanon and Egypt, with a population small but very well assimilated, with many examples of personal achievements, such John Sununu and Ralph Nader in politics, Bobby Rahal in sport, or Paul Anka and Frank Zappa in the music. In recent years a number of new immigrants arrived from Iran, Afghanistan and Iraq.

Arabic Influence

Inheritance and transmission of classical learning

It is commonly accepted that they are Christians Syriac who translated most of the texts of Greek authors into Arabic and annotated versions of Aristotle , of Plato and others have arrived in Europe with annotations of Muslim thinkers who were well somehow contributed to the movement of ideas without being provided the exclusive importers. The romanization of the name may show their influence with European scholars : Ibn Rushd became Averroes, Ibn Sina , Avicenna, Ibn Tufayl Abubacer, Ibn Bajjah Avempace, Hunayn ibn Ishaq Johannitius ...

Islam has quickly conquered the Sasanian Persia and most of the Christian East , where Christians and Jews receive the status of dhimmi subject to tax. The conquerors also require their tributaries that feed into an intellectual contribution that emerging civilization by tapping into the treasures of ancient thought. Syria was the main center of Hellenic thought since Justinian had closed the schools of Athens. The Greek works were translated into Syriac , a later form of Aramaic, a movement that grew louder after the Muslim conquest. With the exception of a few works translated directly from Greek into Arabic, were translated Greek texts usually translated into Syriac .

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 acquire the Greek manuscripts with gold. This movement includes translation works as medicine, logic and philosophy of Greek and Persian literature or astronomy Indian, synthesized through Islam, are the emergence of a new culture philosophical and scientific Arabic called the adab , imparting a new impetus to knowledge in general and science in particular .

The texts were first translated into Syriac and from Syriac into Arabic. Among the famous translators may be mentioned in the ninth ^century physician Ibn Ishaq Hunayn which transcribes medical corpus of Hippocrates and Galen , which will underpin the Canon of Medicine of Avicenna , which will itself be translated into Latin and shall prevail over five centuries. Other important figures are mentioned as al-Farabi gives an interpretation of Aristotle and Plato harmonizing the two philosophies or the scholar al-Biruni , which describes the history of Universe in the Greek tradition. Finally, the work of Averroes , philosopher, theologian and Islamic scholar of the twelfth ^century , a commentator of Aristotle's works, raises heated debates that are as many supporters as detractors and has such an influence in the Medieval West we are talking about Averroism.

Translations of Aristotle and other ancient writers win the Spanish Saracen and Sicily where it actively works translated from Arabic into Latin. Toledo , taken from 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 as Gerard of Cremona. Thus the ancient authors and comments Arab penetrate deeply in the West influencing the thinking of Christian authors as Albertus Magnus and Thomas Aquinas .

This theory is now partially disputed by historians such as Jacques Heers and Sylvain Gouguenheim which, going against the grain of contemporary research , explained in a book widely criticized by his peers, Aristotle at Mont Saint- Michel , that besides the Arabic transmission there would have been a die direct translations from Greek to Latin, including the Mont-Saint-Michel would have been the focus in the early ^twelfth century by Jacques de Venise . The historian, however, confirms the recovery of many Arab-Muslim elements of the culture or know Greek but believes that Aristotle's thought there was no influence in the areas of politics and law, at least the eighth ^to the twelfth ^century .

Gabriel Martinez-Gros, a professor at the University of Paris X , "if the Middle Ages in the West minimizes the contribution of the Arabs is that above all seeks to revive an ancient heritage which he considers his own; medieval Islam for its exalted an ancient Greek unrelated to the Byzantine Empire "

Traditional Filiations

According to biblical tradition and the Koran, the Arabs are a collection of tribes strains Semitic (that is to say a descendant of Shem ), and Hamitic.

Some descendants of Qahtan ( Yoktan ), son of Eber, called "al- Arabu'l-Ariba" (that is to say "Arabs Arab" or "Pure Arabs") or "mut ARIB. The pre-Islamic Arabic poems evoke different Arab tribes. It is through these poems that have survived through oral tradition as it is today the two major founding tribes of Arab culture, 'Abs and Doubian. Other tribes, present later, the Ishmaelites - which came from 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 procured him an Egyptian wife (descendant of Ham through Mistram therefore, according to the Bible). They were called by the first "must ARIB (), 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" the Arabs disappeared.

References