The Middle East is a geopolitical region encompassing the Arabian Peninsula, the Levant, Turkey, Egypt, Iran, and Iraq. The term came into widespread usage as a replacement of the term Near East beginning in the early 20th century. The term "Middle East" has led to some confusion over its changing definitions, and being seen as too Eurocentric. The region includes the vast majority of the territories included in the closely associated definition of West Asia, but without the South Caucasus, and additionally includes all of Egypt and all of Turkey.
SephardicJews, also known as Sephardi Jews or Sephardim, and rarely as Iberian Peninsular Jews, are a Jewish diaspora population associated with the Iberian Peninsula. The term, which is derived from the Hebrew Sepharad, can also refer to the Jews of the Middle East and North Africa, who were also heavily influenced by Sephardic law and customs. Many Iberian Jewish exiled families also later sought refuge in those Jewish communities, resulting in ethnic and cultural integration with those communities over the span of many centuries.
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 Western Asia and Northern 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 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.
Maghrebi Jews or North African Jews are an ethnic group of Jews who had traditionally lived in the Maghreb region of North Africa under Arab rule during the Middle Ages. Established Jewish communities had existed in North Africa long before the arrival of Sephardi Jews, expelled from Portugal and Spain. The term Musta'arabi was also used by medieval Jewish authors to refer to Jews who had traditionally lived in the Maghreb. Due to proximity, the term 'Maghrebi Jews' sometimes refers to Egyptian Jews as well, even though there are important cultural differences between the history of Egyptian and Maghrebi Jews. These Jews originating from North Africa constitute the second largest Jewish diaspora group.
Mizrahi Jews, also known as Mizrahim (מִזְרָחִים) or Mizrachi (מִזְרָחִי) and alternatively referred to as Oriental Jews or Edot HaMizrach, are terms used in Israeli discourse to refer to a grouping of Jewish communities that lived in the Muslim world. Mizrahi is a political sociological term that was coined with the creation of the State of Israel. It translates as "Easterner" in Hebrew. The term Mizrahi is almost exclusively applied to descendants of Jewish communities from North Africa and Asia; in this classification are the descendants of Mashriqi Jews who had lived in Middle Eastern countries, such as Yemenite Jews, Iranian Jews, Kurdish Jews, Turkish Jews, Egyptian Jews, Syrian Jews, Lebanese Jews, Iraqi Jews, Jordanian Jews, Saudi Arabian Jews, Emirati Jews, Kuwaiti Jews, Bahraini Jews, Qatari Jews, Omani Jews; as well as the descendants of Maghrebi Jews who had lived in North African countries, such as Algerian Jews, Libyan Jews, Moroccan Jews, and Tunisian Jews. These various Jewish communities were first officially grouped into a singular identifiable division during World War II, when they were distinctly outlined in the One Million Plan of the Jewish Agency for Israel, which detailed the methods by which Jews of the diaspora were to be returned to the Land of Israel after the Holocaust.
Jewish ethnic divisions refer to many distinctive communities within the world's Jewish population. Although considered a self-identifying ethnicity, there are distinct ethnic subdivisions among Jews, most of which are primarily the result of geographic branching from an originating Israelite population, mixing with local communities, and subsequent independent evolutions.
Arab Jews is a term for Jews living in or originating from the Arab world. The term is politically contested, often by Zionists or by Jews with roots in the Arab world who prefer to be identified as Mizrahi Jews. Many left or were expelled from Arab countries in the decades following the founding of Israel in 1948, and took up residence in Israel, Western Europe, the United States and Latin America.
The Mughrabi Quarter, also known as the Maghrebi Quarter, was a neighbourhood in the southeast corner of the Old City of Jerusalem, established in the late 12th century. It bordered the western wall of the Temple Mount on the east, the Old City walls on the south and the Jewish Quarter to the west. It was an extension of the Muslim Quarter to the north, and was founded as an endowed Islamic waqf or religious property by a son of Saladin.
Palestinian Jews or Jewish Palestinians were the Jewish inhabitants of the Palestine region prior to the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948.
Berber Jews are the Jewish communities of the Maghreb, in North Africa, who historically spoke Berber languages. Between 1950 and 1970 most emigrated to France, the United States, or Israel.
Ella Habiba Shohat is an Iraqi-born Israeli-American professor of cultural studies at New York University, where she teaches in the departments of Art & Public Policy and Middle Eastern & Islamic Studies. She has written and lectured on the topics of Eurocentrism, orientalism, post-colonialism, trans-nationalism, diasporic cultures, and Iraqi-Jewish culture.
The Arab world consists of 22 states. As of 2021, the combined population of all the Arab states was around 475 million people.
Musta'arabi Jews were the Arabic-speaking Jews, largely Mizrahi Jews and Maghrebi Jews, who lived in the Middle East and North Africa prior to the arrival and integration of Ladino-speaking Sephardi Jews of the Iberian Peninsula, following their expulsion from Spain in 1492. Following their expulsion, Sephardi Jewish exiles moved into the Middle East and North Africa, and settled among the Musta'arabi.
Mughrabi, Mugrabi, Mograby, Mograbi, or Moghrabi is a surname and place name derived from "Maghreb" – meaning "West" in Arabic, and usually referring to North Africa or specifically to Morocco, i.e., the westernmost part of the Arab and Muslim world. It exists among both Muslims and Jews originating from this region.
Arab Muslims are the largest subdivision of the Arab people and the largest ethnic group among Muslims globally, followed by Bengalis and Punjabis. Likewise, they comprise the majority of the population of the Arab world.
The Mashriq, also known as the Arab Mashriq, sometimes spelled Mashreq or Mashrek, is a term used by Arabs to refer to the eastern part of the Arab world, as opposed to the Maghreb (western) region, and located in Western Asia and eastern North Africa. It is the Arabic equivalent for the term Middle East. Poetically the "Place of Sunrise", the name is derived from the verb sharaqa, from the sh-r-q root (ش-ر-ق), referring to the east, where the sun rises.
The Arab Mashreq international Road Network is an international road network between the primarily Arab countries of the Mashriq. In addition, part of the network passes through Israel, which is not a party to the agreement that created it as well as non-Arab parts of the region. The network is a result of the 2001 Agreement on International Roads in the Arab Mashreq, a United Nations multilateral treaty that entered into force in 2003 and has been ratified by 13 of the 14 countries that the network serves.
North African Sephardim are a distinct sub-group of Sephardi Jews, who descend from exiled Iberian Jewish families of the late 15th century and North African Maghrebi Jewish communities.
Eastern Sephardim are a distinctive sub-group of Sephardic Jews mostly descended from Jewish families which were exiled from Iberia in the 15th century, following the Alhambra Decree of 1492 in Spain and a similar decree in Portugal five years later. This branch of descendants of Iberian Jews settled across the Eastern Mediterranean.
