History UsefulNotes / ArabWorld

* BellyDancer

* [[UsefulNotes/ModernEgypt Egypt]] (part of both North Africa and Western Asia)

!!!Western Asia

!!!Western Asia

Strictly speaking, the Arab world consists of the majority (but not all) of the countries forming the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arab_League Arab League]], an intergovernmental organization meant to unify and represent Arab interests. All members of the League in UsefulNotes/TheMiddleEast and North Africa, plus Mauritania, which is geographically located in West Africa, are unanimously regarded as part of the Arab world. For economic and political reasons, the League also includes three East African countries whose populations mainly speak other languages: Comoros, Djibouti, and Somalia. They adopt Arabic as an official language and attend the League's meetings in Cairo, but they are not popularly considered part of the Arab world because Arabic is not widely spoken there. Nevertheless, their inclusion into the Arab League means that they are usually listed in some publications, including here. The people of UsefulNotes/{{Malta}}, a Southern European island country on the Mediterranean Sea, speak the descendant of an Arabic dialect, but the country has never been considered Arab since the Europeans reconquered it hundreds of years ago.

* SizableSemiticNose

To describe the Arab world, one must first describe the Arabs themselves. The Arabs are, simply put, people who speak the Arabic language and adhere to Arab culture and traditions. Taken together, Arabs constitute the world's second largest ethnic group, after the Han Chinese. However, the Arabs are at the same time also a heterogeneous people. Many Arabs prefer to identify themselves based on their local region first before a unified Arab identity, which is not surprising, considering the size of their population and settlement. The fact that there are many Arab countries is a testament to this.[[note]]Of course, [[DivideAndConquer political interference by European colonials]] was a major factor as well, but even leaving it out, many historians and ethnologists have argued that a unified state encompassing the ''entirety'' of the Arab world will simply not work (as the various short-lived all-encompassing caliphates could testify) except perhaps as a very loose federation (we're talking "only a notch or two more unified than UsefulNotes/TheEuropeanUnion" here).[[/note]] Like the Han Chinese, the Arabs started out in a relatively small area of settlement and expanded it through conquest, intermarriage, and assimilation, transforming many other formerly unrelated ethnic groups in the Middle East and North Africa into Arabs.

* ArabOilSheikh
* UsefulNotes/TheArabSpring

* ArabianNightsDays
** BazaarOfTheBizarre

** BazaarOfTheBizarre

* OurGeniesAreDifferent
** BecomingTheGenie
** BenevolentGenie
** FreeingTheGenie
** GenieInABottle
** TheGenieInTheMachine
** GenieWorks
** JackassGenie
** LiteralGenie
** {{Wishplosion}}
* OurGhoulsAreCreepier

* RocBirds

^ Myth/ArabMythology

The Arab world is often divided into two big regions by the Arabs themselves: the Mashriq, meaning "East" (Egypt, Sudan, the Fertile Crescent minus UsefulNotes/{{Israel}} and the Arabian Peninsula), and the Maghreb, meaning "West" (consisting of the Western Sahara/Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic, Morocco, Libya, Algeria, Tunisia and Mauritania).[[note]]The line that separates the Mashriqi and Maghrebi worlds is usually construed to be located somewhere in Egypt, a bit west of Alexandria.[[/note]] The Mashriq, specifically the Arabian Peninsula, is the cradle of Arabs and the Arabic language, whose standard register developed there.[[note]]Modern Standard Arabic is based on Classical Arabic, a highly antiquated language spoken in the peninsula during the 7th century CE, when Literature/TheQuran was composed.[[/note]] The Maghreb, meanwhile, is distinguished by its history as the homeland of the indigenous Imazighen ("Berber") people. Most people there can trace their roots back to ethnic Amazighs, but many additionally claim "true" Arab ancestry (whatever that means) from the various Bedouin tribes that made their way west from the Arabian Desert and began herding in North Africa (and intermarrying with the Amazigh, who language and particular history aside were pretty similar).

->'''Capitals''': Sana'a (''De jure''), Aden (Temporary capital in exile)[[note]]Yemen has been mired in civil war since 2015. The UN-backed government was forced to retreat from the capital Sana'a and relocate many times, with the president himself living in exile in Saudi Arabia. The government is technically based in Aden, but the city has been under the control of the Southern Transitional Council, which nominally sides with the government but has agendas of its own, since 2019.[[/note]]
->'''Capital-in-exile''': Riyadh (presidential administration)
->'''Largest City''': Sana'a

* BarbarousBarbaryBuccaneers