History of the Arabs
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]
For other uses, see History of the Arabs (disambiguation).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]