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".
In 2010 the estimate of the Arab population in Europe was approximately 6 million (the total number of the Arab population in Europe described beneath is 6,370,000 people), mostly concentrated in France, Italy, Spain, Germany, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, Belgium, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Finland and Greece. The majority of migrants come from Morocco (2.2 million), Algeria (1.4 million), Tunisia (950,000), Lebanon (700,000), Palestine (700,000), Syria (350,000), Iraq (250,000), Egypt (220,000), Jordan (150,000), Yemen (150,000), Libya (100,000) and Sudan (100,000). [7] [ failed verification ]
Most Arabs in Europe are followers of Islam but there is also a sizable Arab Christian community living in Europe. For example, 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. [8]
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. [9] 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. [10]
North Africa is a region encompassing the northern portion of the African continent. There is no singularly accepted scope for the region, and it is sometimes defined as stretching from the Atlantic shores of the Western Sahara in the west, to Egypt and Sudan's Red Sea coast in the east.
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.
The Arab world, formally the Arab homeland, also known as the Arab nation, 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.
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.
The Maghreb, also known as the Arab Maghreb and Northwest Africa, is the western part of the Arab world. The region comprises western and central North Africa, including Algeria, Libya, Mauritania, Morocco, and Tunisia. The Maghreb also includes the disputed territory of Western Sahara. As of 2018, the region had a population of over 100 million people.
Arab Christians are ethnic Arabs, Arab nationals, or Arabic speakers, who follow Christianity. The number of Arab Christians who live in the Middle East was estimated in 2012 to be between 10 and 15 million. Arab Christian communities can be found throughout the Arab world, but are concentrated in the Eastern Mediterranean region of the Levant and Egypt, with smaller communities present throughout the Arabian Peninsula and North Africa.
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.
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.
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.
The Middle East and North Africa (MENA), also referred to as West Asia and North Africa (WANA) or South West Asia and North Africa (SWANA), is a geographic region which comprises the Middle East and North Africa together. However, it is widely considered to be a more defined and apolitical alternative to the concept of the Greater Middle East, which comprises the bulk of the Muslim world. The region has no standardized definition and groupings may vary, but the term typically includes countries like Algeria, Bahrain, Egypt, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Morocco, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Tunisia, the UAE, and Yemen.
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.
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 and 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.
Maghrebi Arabs or North African Arabs are the inhabitants of the Maghreb region of North Africa whose ethnic identity is Arab, whose native language is Arabic and trace their ancestry to the tribes of the Arabian Peninsula. This ethnic identity is a product of the centuries-long Arab migration to the Maghreb since the 7th century, which changed the demographic scope of the Maghreb and was a major factor in the ethnic, linguistic and cultural Arabization of the Maghreb region. The descendants of the original Arab settlers who continue to speak Arabic as a first language currently form the single largest population group in North Africa.
Arabs in Romania are people from Arab countries who live in Romania. The first Fellah settlers came in 1831 - 1833 from Ottoman Syria to Dobruja. They assimilated in the Turkish-Tatarian Population. Some of them came to Romania during the Ceaușescu era, when many Arab students were granted scholarships to study in Romanian universities. Most of them were Algerians, Syrians, Palestinians, Iraqis, Libyans, Egyptians, and Yemenis. Most of these students returned to their countries of origin, but some remained in Romania starting families here. It is estimated that almost half a million Middle Eastern Arabs studied in Romania during the 1980s. A new wave of Arab immigration started after the Romanian Revolution. Many of the newly arrived Arabs came to Romania in the 1990s in order to develop businesses. In addition, Romania has people from Arab countries who have the status of refugees or illegal immigrants, primarily from North Africa, trying to immigrate to Western Europe. In particular, the European migrant crisis lead to Syrian people coming to Romania, although many Syrians were already living in Romania at the time of the crisis.
Arabs in Sweden are citizens and residents of Sweden who emigrated from nations in the Arab world. They represent 5.3% of the total population of the country. About a quarter of Arabs in Sweden are Christians.
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 demographics of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region show a highly populated, culturally diverse region spanning three continents. As of 2023, the population was around 501 million. The class, cultural, ethnic, governmental, linguistic and religious make-up of the region is highly variable.
The Arab migrations to the Maghreb involved successive waves of migration and settlement by Arab people in the Maghreb region of Africa, encompassing modern-day Algeria, Libya, Morocco and Tunisia. The process took place over several centuries, lasting from the early 7th century to the 17th century. The Arab migrants hailed from the Middle East, particularly the Arabian Peninsula, with later groups arriving from the Levant and Iraq.
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