History of the Arabs

The history of the Arabs begins in the mid-ninth century BC, which is the earliest known attestation of the Old Arabic language. The Arabs appear to have been under the vassalage of the Neo-Assyrian Empire; they went from Mauritania to Saudi Arabia.

Before the expansion of the Rashidun Caliphate (632 - 661), "Arab" referred to any of the largely nomadic and settled Semitic people from the Arabian Peninsula, Syrian Desert, North and Lower Mesopotamia.[6] Today, "Arab" refers to a large number 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.[7] The Arabs forged the Rashidun (632 - 661), Umayyad (661 - 750) and the Abbasid (750 - 1258) caliphates, whose borders reached southern France in the west, China in the east, Anatolia in the north, and the Sudan in the south. This was one of the largest land empires in history.[8] In the early 20th century, the First World War signalled the end of the Ottoman Empire; which had ruled much of the Arab world since conquering the Mamluk Sultanate in 1517.[9] This resulted in the defeat and dissolution of the empire and the partition of its territories, forming the modern Arab states.[10] Following the adoption of the Alexandria Protocol in 1944, the Arab League was founded on 22 March 1945.[11] The Charter of the Arab League endorsed the principle of an Arab homeland whilst respecting the individual sovereignty of its member states.[12]History of the Arabs