Regions with significant populations | |
---|---|
France | 4,000,000–7,000,000 [1] |
Spain | 1,600,000–1,800,000 [2] |
Germany | 1,401,950 [3] |
Netherlands | 682,873 [4] |
Italy | 680,000 [5] |
United Kingdom | 500,000 [6] |
Languages | |
European languages, Arabic | |
Religion | |
Islam Christianity Druze | |
Related ethnic groups | |
Arabs (Arab diaspora) |
Arabs in Europe are people from Arabic-speaking countries living in Europe. Several million Arabs are residents in Europe. The vast majority form part of what is sometimes called the "Arab diaspora".
The estimated size of the Arab population in Europe is unknown, and estimates for countries vary significantly.
Most Arabs in Europe are followers of Christianity and Islam but there are minorities of other religious communities living in Europe. Most of the Lebanese immigrants in Europe are Christians.
Arab presence in Europe predates Islam, and became predominant during the eras of the Roman and Byzantine Empire. The Romans conquered the Nabatean Kingdom in the Southern Levant, and named the province Arabia Petraea , and led a failed invasion of Yemen and South Arabia and what they called Arabia Felix or "Happy Arabia". Although at the time, Syria was a non-Arab nation for the most part, it had already been home to a large Arab minority. These were assimilated Arabs, and they established a well-known presence, especially in the Severan Dynasty. In the late 180s, the Roman emperor Septimius Severus married a prominent Syrian Arab by the name of Julia Domna. Domna had a descendant, Elagabalus who eventually became Roman Emperor as well. In 244 A.D., another Syrian Arab by the name of Marcus Julius Philippus or Philip ascended to the Roman throne upon Emperor Gordian III's death. He was given the famous nickname Philip the Arab (Latin : Philippus Arabus) and came from an equestrian family. His father Julius Marinus was known to have been an Arab tribal leader and a prominent Roman citizen who played a part in Philip's ascension to the throne. The Arabs were more culturally independent under Byzantine rule. Originally Azdi pagan migrants, they had adopted Christianity, and bore Arabic names not Latin or Greek.
The famous Arabian Palmyrene queen Zenobia led a famous revolt against the Roman Empire. After suffering an eventual defeat against the Romans, she spent the last few years of her living in the empire...
Arabs in Europe have a history beginning with the Umayyad Caliphate, which conquered the Iberian Peninsula, including what is now Spain and Portugal, in 711 AD. Other Arabs occupied the Italian island of Sicily from 831 to 1072. Arabs were later expelled from those domains after the Reconquista and the Catholic Church's Inquisition of non-believers. There were also brief periods of independent Arab-Islamic colonization and occupation, in modern-day France, Switzerland, and Italy, using Fraxinet in the Gulf of St. Tropez as a base for raids and colonisation. [7]
The Iberian Peninsula was mapped as "Al-Andalus" by the new Muslim invaders. The Arabs were an aristocratic elite who ruled over, a Muslim population (a mix of Berbers, Arabs and Iberian convert the made the vast majority of the population) in Al-Andalus and North Africa. All Muslims in Muslim Spain, regardless of ethnicity, were referred to as "Moors". Spain enjoyed a golden era of Islamic culture, accompanied by a golden age of Sephardic Jewish culture. This era spawned great polymaths and intellectuals such as Averroes and Albucasis. The Islamic rule in Spain also saw the birth of the Aljamiado alphabet, an Arabic alphabet for the Spanish language. In the 15th century, the Muslims were defeated by the Christian armies in a historical process called Reconquista (meaning reconquest in Spanish and Portuguese), which led the Christian monarchs to regain control over the Iberian peninsula. Much of the architecture that was concocted from this era remains intact in Spain and functions as famous tourist destinations since the Catholic monarchs decided to use them rather than destroy them.
This section possibly contains original research .(November 2014) |
After the Moors lost control of Spain, King Philip II made treaties with them allowing them to practice their religion if they gave up their sovereignty, signing the Treaty of Granada in 1491. The Catholic monarchs however, abrogated the treaties and threatened to expel the Moors if they did not become Christians. The Moors did so, but continued speaking Arabic, and using Aljamiado alphabet for spoken Spanish. Some followed Islam in secret (Crypto-Islam). They were later referred to as Moriscos, Moors and their descendants who converted to Christianity rather than be expelled. Religious conversion was simply not enough for the Catholic monarchs. Phillip II implemented a policy to fully assimilate the Moriscos into the Christian Spanish population and eliminate Moorish and Arab culture from Spain. The Moriscos were forced to abandon their Arabic names and adopt a completely Hispanized heritage and give up their children to be educated by priests. Philip II also made speaking Arabic illegal in the kingdom, ordered all Arabic texts to be burned, and banned Moorish attire. After a failed revolt by Morisco leader Aben Humeya (or Ibn Umayyah) in 1568, the Christian monarchs expelled the Moriscos from Spain. Many of these Moriscos headed for North Africa, mainly in Morocco, where many of their descendants settled.
The post-World War II migration of Arabs to Europe began as many Arabs from former French colonies like Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia, Lebanon and Syria migrated permanently to France. Another source of migration began with guest workers , particularly from Morocco, who arrived under the terms of a Labour Export Agreement between several European countries including Germany, Spain, the Netherlands, Belgium, Austria and France. Other events in the Arab world sent new immigration waives to Europe like the Palestinian exodus, the Lebanese Civil War, the first and second Iraq War, Libyan Civil War and Syrian civil war. Many other Arabs emigrated to Europe because of political issues in their native countries. Arabs who studied in European universities and decided to stay are another source of migration.
After the 2011 events of the Arab Spring in Tunisia and Libya, around 20,000 Tunisian and also Libyan immigrants have left their countries for France and Germany, migrating through Italy. Nicolas Sarkozy and Angela Merkel recommended suspending the Schengen Agreement and imposing border control in order to keep immigrants from migrating to their countries, but no actions have yet been taken on the issue. Italy and Greece kept receiving migration waves from Egypt and Syria since the violence in these two Arab countries escalated in 2013. [8] In 2015 the European continent witnessed its biggest Arab immigration as part of the European migrant crisis when thousands of Arab families escaped from Syria and Iraq. [9]
The Arabs, also known as the Arab people, are an ethnic group mainly inhabiting the Arab world in West Asia and North Africa. A significant Arab diaspora is present in various parts of the world.
The term Moor is an exonym first used by Christian Europeans to designate the Muslim populations of the Maghreb, al-Andalus, Sicily and Malta during the Middle Ages. Moors are not a single, distinct or self-defined people. The 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica observed that the term had "no real ethnological value." Europeans of the Middle Ages and the early modern period variously applied the name to Arabs, Berbers, and Muslim Europeans.
Moriscos were former Muslims and their descendants whom the Catholic Church and Habsburg Spain commanded to forcibly convert to Christianity or face compulsory exile after Spain outlawed Islam. Spain had a sizeable Muslim population, the mudéjars, in the early 16th century.
An alcázar, from Arabic al-Qasr, is a type of Islamic castle or palace in Spain built during Muslim rule between the 8th and 15th centuries. They functioned as homes and regional capitals for governmental figures throughout the Umayyad caliphate and later for Christian rulers following the Iberian Reconquista. The term alcázar is also used for many medieval castles built by Christians on earlier Roman, Visigothic or Islamic fortifications and is frequently used as a synonym for castillo or castle. In Latin America there are also several colonial palaces called alcázars.
Andalusi Arabic or Andalusian Arabic was a variety or varieties of Arabic spoken mainly from the 9th to the 15th century in Al-Andalus, the regions of the Iberian Peninsula, respectively modern Spain until the late-15th century, and modern Portugal until the mid-13th century under Muslim rule. It became an extinct language in Iberia after the expulsion of the Moriscos, which took place over a century after the Granada War by the Catholic Monarchs of Spain. Once widely spoken in Iberia, the expulsions and persecutions of Arabic speakers caused an abrupt end to the language's use on the peninsula. It continued to be spoken to some degree in North Africa after the expulsion, although Andalusi speakers rapidly assimilated into the Maghrebi communities to which they fled.
Arabization or Arabicization is a sociological process of cultural change in which a non-Arab society becomes Arab, meaning it either directly adopts or becomes strongly influenced by the Arabic language, culture, literature, art, music, and ethnic identity as well as other socio-cultural factors. It is a specific form of cultural assimilation that often includes a language shift. The term applies not only to cultures, but also to individuals, as they acclimate to Arab culture and become "Arabized". Arabization took place after the Muslim conquest of the Middle East and North Africa, as well as during the more recent Arab nationalist policies toward non-Arab minorities in modern Arab states, such as Algeria, Iraq, Syria, Egypt, Bahrain, and Sudan.
Aljamiado or Aljamía texts are manuscripts that use the Arabic script for transcribing European languages, especially Romance languages such as Old Spanish or Aragonese. This alphabet is also called the Morisco alphabet.
Spaniards, or Spanish people, are a people native to Spain. Within Spain, there are a number of national and regional ethnic identities that reflect the country's complex history, including a number of different languages, both indigenous and local linguistic descendants of the Roman-imposed Latin language, of which Spanish is the largest and the only one that is official throughout the whole country.
New Christian was a socio-religious designation and legal distinction referring to the population of former Jewish and Muslim converts to Christianity in the Spanish and Portuguese empires, and their respective colonies in the New World. The term was used from the 15th century onwards primarily to describe the descendants of the Sephardic Jews and Moors that were baptized into the Catholic Church following the Alhambra Decree of 1492. The Alhambra Decree, also known as the Edict of Expulsion, was an anti-Jewish law made by the Catholic Monarchs upon the Reconquista of the Iberian Peninsula. It required Jews to convert to Roman Catholicism or be expelled from Spain. Most of the history of the "New Christians" refers to the Jewish converts, who were generally known as Conversos, while the Muslim converts were called Moriscos.
Islam is a minority religion in Italy. Muslim presence in Italy dates back to the 9th century, when Sicily came under control of the Aghlabid Dynasty. There was a large Muslim presence in Italy from 827 until the 12th century. The Norman conquest of Sicily led to a gradual decline of Islam, due to the conversions and emigration of Muslims toward Northern Africa. A small Muslim community however survived at least until 1300. By the 1900s, with the Italian colonisation of Libya, Somalia, Eritrea and Albania, a new wave of Muslim migrants, mainly from these two countries, entered Italy and remained the most dominant Muslim groups until the end of the 20th century, and often Islamic prayers were conducted in either Arabic, Amharic, Somali or Albanian.
An Arabist is someone, often but not always from outside the Arab world, who specialises in the study of the Arabic language and culture.
Argentina is a predominantly Christian country, with Islam being a minority religion. Due to secular nature of the Argentine constitution, Muslims are free to proselytize and build places of worship in the country.
Muladí were the native population of the Iberian Peninsula who adopted Islam after the Muslim conquest of the Iberian Peninsula in the early 8th century. The demarcation of muladíes from the population of Arab and Berber extraction was relevant in the first centuries of Islamic rule, however, by the 10th century, they diluted into the bulk of the society of al-Andalus. In Sicily, Muslims of local descent or of mixed Arab, and Sicilian origin were also sometimes referred to as Muwallad. They were also called Musalimah ('Islamized'). In broader usage, the word muwallad is used to describe Arabs of mixed parentage, especially those not living in their ancestral homelands.
Sri Lankan Moors are an ethnic minority group in Sri Lanka, comprising 9.3% of the country's total population. Most of them are native speakers of the Tamil language. The majority of Moors who are not native to the North and East also speak Sinhalese as a second language. They are predominantly followers of Islam. The Sri Lankan Muslim community is mostly divided between Sri Lankan Moors, Indian Moors, Sri Lankan Malays and Sri Lankan Bohras. These groups are differentiated by lineage, language, history, culture and traditions.
During the Spanish Golden Age a great number of translations were made, specially from Arabic, Latin and Greek classics, into Spanish, and in turn, from Spanish into other languages.
Syrians are the majority inhabitants of Syria, indigenous to the Levant, who have Arabic, especially its Levantine and Mesopotamian dialects, as a mother tongue. The cultural and linguistic heritage of the Syrian people is a blend of both indigenous elements and the foreign cultures that have come to rule the land and its people over the course of thousands of years. By the seventh century, most of the inhabitants of the Levant spoke Aramaic. In the centuries after the Muslim conquest of the Levant in 634, Arabic became the dominant language, but a minority of Syrians retained Aramaic (Syriac), which is still spoken in its Eastern and Western dialects.
The Expulsion of the Moriscos was decreed by King Philip III of Spain on April 9, 1609. The Moriscos were descendants of Spain's Muslim population who had been forced to convert to Christianity. Since the Spanish were fighting wars in the Americas, feeling threatened by the Ottomans raiding along the Spanish coast and by two Morisco revolts in the century since Islam was outlawed in Spain, it seems that the expulsions were a reaction to an internal problem of the stretched Spanish Empire. Between 1609 through 1614, the Crown systematically expelled Moriscos through a number of decrees affecting Spain's various kingdoms, with varying levels of success. Between 1492 and 1610 alone, about three million Muslims left or were expelled from Spain.
Latin American Muslims are Muslims from countries in Latin America. A survey conducted by the Pew Research Center in 2010 found that Muslims make up 0.1% of all of Latin America's population.
Arab New Zealanders refers to people from Arab countries, particularly Lebanon, Syria, Palestine, Iraq, and Jordan and also small groups from Egypt, Algeria, Tunisia, Morocco, Libya, Yemen and Sudan, who emigrated from their native nations and currently reside in New Zealand. The term also refers to descendants of diasporic Arabians such as descendants of Arab merchants to Asian nations, whose ancestral origins may be traced to merchants hailing from the Southern Arabian nations such as Yemen and Oman and the Arab nations of the Persian gulf region. Most Arab New Zealanders are of Lebanese and Iraqi descent because they were the first Arabs to arrive in New Zealand. Therefore, an Arab New Zealander is a New Zealander of Arab cultural and linguistic heritage or identity whose ancestry traces back to any of various waves of immigrants originating from one or more of the twenty countries comprised by the Arab world.
The Oran fatwa was a responsum fatwa, or an Islamic legal opinion, issued in 1502 to address the crisis that occurred when Muslims in the Crown of Castile, in present-day Spain, were forced to convert to Christianity in 1500–1502. It was authored by a maliki mufti Ahmad ibn Abi Jum'ah, an Algerian scholar of Islamic law of the Maliki school; the term "Oran fatwa" was applied by modern scholars, due to the word "Al-Wahrani" that appears in the text as part of the author's name.
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