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Arab States


The Arab world (Arabic: العالم العربي‎‎ al-ʿālam al-ʿarabī; formally: الوطن العربي al-wațan al-ʿarabī), also known as the Arab nation (الأمة العربية al-ʾummah al-ʿarabīah), consists of the 22 Arabic-speaking countries of the Arab League. These Arab states occupy an area stretching from the Atlantic Ocean in the west to the Arabian Sea in the east, and from the Mediterranean Sea in the north to the Horn of Africa and the Indian Ocean in the southeast. The contemporary Arab world has a combined population of around 422 million people, over half of whom are under 25 years of age.

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. The term "Arab world" is sometimes also used to refer to historic Arab empires.

The term "Arab world" is controversial as it may imply that the entire region is Bedouin in its identity, population, and origin, which is false. Many non-Arabic speaking groups who live in the region do not consider themselves Arab — such as Berbers and Kurds — and the original homeland of the Arabs is the Arabian Peninsula. The term is also rejected by some indigenous Christian Semitic minorities such as the Assyrians, and many of the Maronites and Egyptian Coptic Christians, as these populations pre-date Islam in North Africa, Mesopotamia and the Eastern Mediterranean.


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