Arab world

The Arab world (Arabic: اَلْعَالَمُ الْعَرَبِيُّ al-ʿālam al-ʿarabī), formally the Arab homeland (اَلْوَطَنُ الْعَرَبِيُّ al-waṭan al-ʿarabī), also known as the Arab nation (اَلْأُمَّةُ الْعَرَبِيَّةُ al-ummah al-ʿarabiyyah), the Arabsphere, or the Arab states, comprises a large group of countries, mainly located in West Asia and North Africa. While the majority of people in the Arab world are ethnically Arab, there are also significant populations of other ethnic groups such as Berbers, Kurds, Somalis and Nubians, among other groups. Arabic is used as the lingua franca throughout the Arab world.

The Arab world is at its minimum defined as the 19 states where Arabs form at least a plurality of the population. At its maximum it consists of the 22 members of the Arab League, an international organization, which on top of the 19 plurality Arab states also includes the Bantu-speaking Comoros, and the Cushitic-speaking Djibouti and Somalia. The region stretches from the Atlantic Ocean in the west to the Arabian Sea in the east, and from the Mediterranean Sea in the north to the Indian Ocean in the southeast. The eastern part of the Arab world is known as the Mashriq, and the western part as the Maghreb.

According to the World Bank, the Arab world has a total population of 456 million inhabitants and a gross domestic product of $2.85 trillion, as of 2021. The region is economically quite diverse, and includes some of the wealthiest as well as poorest populations in the world.

In post-classical history, the Arab world was synonymous with the historic Arab empires and caliphates. Arab nationalism arose in the second half of the 19th century along with other nationalist movements within the Ottoman Empire. The Arab League was formed in 1945 to represent the interests of Arab people and especially to pursue the political unification of the Arab countries, a project known as Pan-Arabism.

In page 9 of Best Divisions for Knowledge of the Regions, 10th century Arab geographer Al Maqdisi used the term Arab regions to refer to the lands of the Arabian Peninsula (Bahrain, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates and Yemen). He also considered Iraq, alongside Upper Mesopotamia (Iraq, Syria and Turkey), Ash-Sham (Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Palestine, Syria and Turkey), Egypt and the Maghreb (Algeria, Libya, Mauritania, Morocco, Tunisia and Western Sahara Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic) to be part of the Arab regions.

Malta, an island country in Southern Europe whose national language derives from Arabic (through Sicilian Arabic), is not included in the region. Similarly, Chad, Eritrea and Israel recognize Arabic as one of their official or working languages but are not included in the region because they are not members of the Arab League.

The linguistic and political denotation inherent in the term Arab is generally dominant over genealogical considerations. In Arab states, Standard Arabic is used by the government. Local vernacular languages are referred to as Darija (الدَّارِجَة "everyday/colloquial language") in the Maghreb or Aammiyya (ٱلْعَامِيَّة "common language") in the Mashreq. The majority of the vocabulary in these vernaculars is shared with Standard Arabic; however, some of them also significantly borrow from other languages, such as Berber, French, Spanish and Italian in the Maghreb.

Although no globally accepted definition of the Arab world exists, all countries that are members of the Arab League are generally acknowledged as being part of the Arab world.