Arab History

Origins of Arab Culture

The history of Arab culture is closely tied to the expansion of the religion Islam and the Arabic language. Before the founding of Islam in the 7th century, Arab culture developed among the Semitic peoples of the Arabian Peninsula and Mesopotamia. The early Arabs lived as sedentary farmers, merchants, warriors, and nomadic herders. They shared common linguistic and ethnic roots with other Semitic peoples like the Hebrews, Canaanites, and Akkadians. Many practiced a polytheistic indigenous faith, though religions like Christianity, Judaism, and Zoroastrianism were well known in the region. The Lakhmid Kingdom formed around 300 CE housed a sizable Christian population, much like the Ghassanid Kingdom to its west. These Arab states allied between Persia, Rome, and the Byzantine Empire before falling in the early 7th century.

Muhammad and the Expansion of Islam

Arab culture rose to global prominence with the birth of the Prophet Muhammad. Muhammad, an orphan by the age of six, was born in 570 in the city of Mecca. At 40, he received a series of messages from the angel Gabriel and soon announced himself as a prophet of God, or Allah. He spoke against the existing polytheistic worship of his homeland, which proved controversial among the elite classes. After being driven from Mecca in 622, he amassed an army of loyal followers in Medina. These warriors returned to Mecca in force in 629, cementing both the religious and military dominance of his new faith. Muhammad died just three years later, leaving behind a zealous and mobilized Arab army. They embarked on a sweeping series of conquests under the authority of the Rashidun Caliphate.

Early disputes over succession split the religion between Sunni and Shia factions. The Sunni Umayyad dynasty succeeded the Rashidun Caliphate. The Umayyads primarily ruled from Damascus in modern Syria. They oversaw Islamic expansion into North Africa and the Iberian Peninsula, among other regions. Wherever the Arabs went, they brought with them their language and religion. The cultures they conquered retained many of their own customs, but most adopted both Islam and Arabic. This process, known as Arabization, would unify the later Arab world.

The Islamic Golden Age

In 750, the Umayyad dynasty was overthrown by a separate branch of Muhammad’s family, the Abbasids. The Umayyad line persisted through the Emirate and Caliphate of Cordoba in modern Spain. The Abbasid dynasty, meanwhile, soon moved its capital to the city of Baghdad. There they oversaw the Islamic Empire at its height, a period known as the Islamic Golden Age.

While much of Europe struggled to stabilize in the wake of the Roman Empire, the Arab world flourished. Baghdad, Damascus, Cairo, and Cordoba developed into multicultural societies and hubs of learning. Muslim and Christian scholars alike worked together to preserve and expand the works of earlier philosophers like Aristotle and Plato. They gathered texts and ideas from regions as diverse as China, India, Persia, North Africa, Mesopotamia, Greece, and the Byzantine Empire. Baghdad’s House of Wisdom, a library and academy, housed a massive collection of their translated works on astronomy, medicine, history, philosophy, poetry, architecture, and more.

This dedication to knowledge resulted in many notable advances and inventions. Scholars wrote their texts on paper derived from China. They perfected the astrolabe, a navigational tool invented by the Greeks, through their own advancements in mathematics. Persian culture introduced new forms of art, music, and poetry. All of these efforts were funded by rich trade routes centered in Baghdad. By the 10th century, however, the Abbasid caliphs had lost much of their earlier authority. The Shia Fatimid dynasty, descended from Fatima, a daughter of Muhammad, established their own caliphate in Cairo. The Seljuk Turks, major figures in the Crusades, took control of most Abbasid territory while the caliphs governed religious affairs.

The Seljuk, Mongol, and Ottoman Empires

For the next several centuries, the Arab world passed from one conqueror to the next. Saladin, a Kurdish sultan made famous by the Crusades, toppled the Fatimids to found his own Ayyubid dynasty by 1171. In 1258, the Mongol Ilkhanate’s armies laid siege to Baghdad. The city resisted and, when it fell days later, received no mercy. The Mongol forces killed, burned, and pillaged their way through its streets over the course of a week. Supposedly, they wrapped its Caliph Al-Musta'sim in a rug before trampling him beneath the hooves of their horses. Among the losses were the House of Wisdom and its scholars. The waters of the Tigris were said to run black with ink in the chaos.

The destruction of Baghdad ended the Islamic Golden Age. The remaining Abbasids fled to Egypt, but they were little more than religious figureheads. Islamic culture had grown beyond the Arabs alone; it now encompassed civilizations headed by Berbers, Persians, Turks, Mongols, Mamluks, Syrians, and more, all with their own regional conflicts and social structures. Christian armies reconquered Muslim Spain, or Al-Andalus, by 1492. Power in the Middle East eventually consolidated with the Ottoman Turks, who conquered Islamic territories in the 15th and 16th centuries. Arabs, while no longer the ruling ethnic group, were generally treated with respect under Ottoman authority.

Colonialism in the Arab World

Arab nationalism emerged with the decline of the Ottoman Empire. In 1744, the founders of the House of Saud declared independence from the Turks and established the Emirate of Diriyah. The emirate claimed the holy cities of Mecca and Medina, drawing the ire of the Ottomans. Although the larger empire finally captured and executed the leaders of the revolt, the House of Saud would go on to found modern Saudi Arabia.

In the early 20th century, Arab leaders turned to European powers to help overthrow the Ottomans. The Arab Revolt, beginning in 1916, ended alongside World War I, but its terms caused dissatisfaction among many Arab leaders. With the Ottoman Empire on the brink of collapse, the British and French influenced or controlled much of the region. European committees divided former Ottoman territories into new nation-states, many of which have survived to the modern day. They worked in partnership with the House of Saud, which founded the modern Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in 1932. Other nations, many rebelling against the mandates of colonialism, would form in the decades following World War II.

The Modern Arab World

Today, there are 22 Arab nations making up the modern Arab world. Each nation is home to its own cultures, religious sects, and politics, all united by their shared Arab heritage. They form the Arab League, founded in 1945 to protect their collective interests. Since the World War I era, these diverse countries have seen very different fortunes. The discovery of immense oil deposits in the Middle East made it a critical region in the wars and economic booms that followed. While some countries experienced immense growth and wealth, others have struggled with persistent poverty, warfare, and drought. As of 2016, there were an estimated 406 million people living in the Arab world.

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References

“Arab World.” The World Bank, The World Bank Group, data.worldbank.org/region/arab-world?view=chart.

Barakat, Halim. The Arab World: Society, Culture, and State. University of California Press. 1993.

Habib Hourani, Albert and Malise Ruthven. A History of the Arab Peoples. Harvard University Press. 2002.

Hitti, Philip Khuri. The Arabs: A Short History. Regnery Publishing. 1996.

Warnock Fernea, Elizabeth and Robert A. Fernea. The Arab World. Knopf Doubleday Publishing. 2011.

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