Arab people

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Arabs
العرب

Total population

approx. 300 to 340 million^{[needs proving]}

Regions with significant populations

Sudan	46,992,490
Morocco	38,241,259
Algeria	33,190,000
Saudi Arabia	27,601,038
Iraq	27,000,000
Yemen	21,200,000
Syria	20,314,747
Brazil ^[1]	16.866.000
Tunisia	13.031.100
Somalia	10,700,000
Iran	9,000,000
Europe	6,000,000
Jordan	5,924,000
Libya	5,670,688
United Arab Emirates	4,496,000
Eritrea	4,401,000
Palestine	3,982,405
Lebanon	3,925,502
United States	3,500,000
Oman	3,204,800
Kuwait	3,100,000
Mauritania	3,069,000
Israel	1,400,000
Qatar	841,000
Djibouti	793,000
Bahrain	698,585
Turkey	400,000

Languages

Arabic and other minority languages

Religions

Islam, Christianity, Druzism and Judaism

The Arabs (Arabic: عرب ʻarab) are an originally Arabian ethnicity widespread in the Middle East and North Africa.

1 Who is an Arab
2 Traditional genealogy
3 References
4 Other websites

[change] Who is an Arab

There are three points which decide whether someone is considered Arab or not:

Political: whether they live in a country which is a member of the Arab League (or, more generally, the Arab World); this definition covers more than 300 million people.
Linguistic: whether their main language is Arabic; this definition covers more than 200 million people.
Genealogical: whether they can trace their ancestry back to the people who first lived on the Arabian Peninsula.

There are many people who can be called Arabs by these points who do not think of themselves as Arab.

[change] Traditional genealogy

In Islamic and Jewish tradition, Arabs are a Semitic people who trace their ancestry from Ishmael, a son of the ancient patriarch Abraham and Hagar. Medieval Arab genealogists separate the Arabs into two groups: the "original Arabs" of South Arabia, descending from Qahtan (identified with the biblical Joktan) and the "Arabized Arabs" (musta`ribah) of North Arabia, descending from Adnan, supposed to be a son of Ishmael.