Table of Contents
In my previous four posts, I have focused on the truth that ALL of the land now called Palestine, plus much, much more belongs to Israel per the covenant God made with Abraham. My next few posts will focus on the question of: who are the “Arabs” claiming the land God gave Israel. You can find links to the other posts at the end.
Mitchel Bard tells us:
For many centuries, Palestine was a sparsely populated, poorly cultivated, and [a] widely-neglected expanse of eroded hills, sandy deserts, and malarial marshes. Mark Twain, who visited Palestine in 1867, described it as: “…[a] desolate country whose soil is rich enough, but is given over wholly to weeds-a silent mournful expanse…. We never saw a human being on the whole route…There was hardly a tree or a shrub anywhere. Even the olive and the cactus, those fast friends of the worthless soil, had almost deserted the country.”
Mitchel Bard, director of the Jewish Virtual Library
Another observation by Mr. Lewis French said he found a region in Palestine:
… inhabited by fellahin [A peasant or agricultural laborer] who lived in mud hovels and suffered severely from the prevalent malaria. . . . Large areas of their lands were uncultivated and covered with weeds. There were no trees, no vegetables. The fellahin, if not themselves cattle thieves, were always ready to harbor these and other criminals. The individual plots of cultivation changed hands annually. There was little public security, and the fellahin’s lot was an alternation of pillage and blackmail by their neighbours, the Bedouin.
From the report of Mr. Lewis French, Director of Development appointed by the British Government in 1931
Who are the “Arabs” and Where did they Originate?
Peter Webb in his book Imagining the Arabs: Arab Identity and the Rise of Islam states:
“The traditional assumptions about “Arabs” liken them to ancient desert Arabia where independent-minded clusters of Bedouin reside herding camels. Which in turn fuel the narratives of Arab origins.”
However, what are the facts concerning the “Arab’s” origin? Moreover, have they any claim to the land known as Palestine? Consider the following:
- Today in our Western world culture, many rely on stories, movies, social media, and hearsay to provide the “facts” concerning the “Arab’s” origin and their plight.
- Moreover, it is also assumed that Arab migrations began at the dawn of Islam in the 7th century AD and spread across the Middle East, and the core of their expansion laid the ground of today’s Arab world.
- Many generally believe that the Arab world has its roots in the union of Abraham and Hagar the Egyptian maid of Sarah, Abraham’s wife.
- Greek writers over 2,500 years ago, crafted their literary fantasies of “the Arab” without ever being to the Levant.
However, taking classical Greeks at their word is only fiction, not fact. Scholars have moved beyond Greek testimony to reconstruct factual ancient history, yet the idea of “Arabs” has mostly escaped critical scrutiny.
“History reports its first apparent “Arab” in annals of the Iraqi-based Neo-Assyrian Empire (911-612 BC). The Assyrians pushed their frontiers towards southwestern deserts where they encountered nomadic camel-herding peoples whom their administrators labeled with names such as Arba-a, Aribi, Urbi etc. Assyrian texts reveal the “Arab” sounding words in the Assyrian language … articulate what Assyrians thought of distant, disparate, and pesky groups along their frontier, and do not…reflect how Arabian groups organized themselves.“
Peter Webb
Who are the “Arabs”? Are They Descendants of Ishmael?
As mentioned earlier, it is generally believed that the Arab world has its roots in the union of Abraham and Hagar the Egyptian maid of Sarah, Abraham’s wife (Gen 16:2-4).
Ishmael was the firstborn of his father Abraham when he dwelt in the plain of Mamre. Jewish and Christian tradition held that Ishmael was the ancestor of the Arabic people. Saint Jerome stated that in his time they called the districts of Arabia by the names of the Ishmaelite tribes mentioned in the Bible.
Abraham, Hagar, and Ishmael
Most of the history of Ishmael found in the Scriptures is found in the book of Genesis chapters 16, 17, and 21. Below are a few verses regarding Ishmael.
- The Lord told Hagar: (Gen 16:10-11) “I will greatly multiply your descendants so that they will be too many to count.”
- Furthermore, The angel of the Lord said to her: “He will be a wild donkey of a man, His hand will be against everyone, And everyone’s hand will be against him, And he will live to the east of all his brothers.” (Gen 16:12)
- The Lord told Abraham that Ishmael would become the father of twelve princes and that the Lord would make him a great nation. (Gen 16:20). HOWEVER, The Lord reiterated: But My covenant I will establish with Isaac… (Gen 16:21).
- God also promised Hagar that Ishmael, as a son of Abraham, would become a great nation (Gen 21:17–18).
- Hagar found a wife from Egypt for her son, and Ishmael settled in the desert of Paran (Gen 21:21).
Ishmael had twelve sons who became great rulers and eventually a nation of people. The Bible lists Ishmael’s sons as Nebaioth, Kedar, Adbeel, Mibsam, Mishma, Dumah, Massa, Hadad, Tema, Jetur, Naphish, and Kedemah (Gen 25:13–15).
Scriptures tell us that Ishmael’s descendants “settled in the area from Havilah to Shur, near the border of Egypt as you go toward Ashur” (Gen 25:18).
The area of Havilah where Ishmael’s descendants lived is in the northern part of what we now call Saudi Arabia; Shur is a wilderness area between Beersheba in the Negev Desert and Egypt.
Gen 25:1-2 states: Abraham again took a wife, and her name was Keturah. And she bore him Zimran, Jokshan, Medan, Midian, Ishbak, and Shuah.
Ishmael and Midian were half brothers and in the Bible, Midianites and Ishmaelites are used interchangeably in the account of selling Joseph to Egypt (Gen 37:25-28,36; 39:1).
The Ishmaelites and Midianites intermarried to become one people when Joseph was traded to the Ishmaelites.
Who are the “Arabs”? A Nation or Not…That is the Question
Before Islam, “Arab” was a generic term for Bedouins often raiders, and is applied to the nomadic as distinct from the sedentary population of those who inhabited the Arabian Peninsula and the Syrian desert. Moreover, there are many nations described today as “Arab” that are not “Arab” at all.
In our modern world, the answer to the question ‘Who is an Arab’ is usually: one whose mother tongue is Arabic.
Arab and Western scholars give a more defined answer as those who speak Arabic, are brought up in Arab culture, and live in an Arabian country.
However, neither of these answers is satisfactory, because many who fulfill all the above do not call themselves “Arabs” such as:
- Iran is a radically Islamic country but does not consider itself as “Arab”.
- They are Persians and the only Middle Eastern country to have held to its ancestral language after embracing Islam.
- Islam is her only common denominator with the Arab nations.
- Egyptians are not all “Arabs” and the Christian Copts of Egypt fervently deny being Arab.
- Jews who were born and raised in Arab lands do not consider themselves to be Arabs (nor would the Arabs dream of considering them as such).
Who are the “Arabs”? Arabians? Not So Fast…
Logically I would think that “Arabs” were people born in Arabia… just as Italians are people who were born in Italy. Or Germans, Germany… Americans, America. However, while many have their own opinions of the origins of ‘authentic Arabs’ inner Arabian populations left no records in which they refer to themselves as “Arabs”.
Suspicions that there was no ancient ‘Arab community’ in Arabia are corroborated by Arabian voices from the centuries before Islam. Archaeologists have unearthed thousands of pre-Islamic inscriptions from Yemen to Jordan, and reference to “Arab” as a label for oneself or one’s community is absent.
Moreover, evidence for the Arabic language itself is minimal. Arabians in the first centuries AD were a scattered array of very diverse people, speaking related but distinct languages, and lacking a sense of political, communal, or cultural unity.
Instead of a pre-Islamic Arabia filled with “Arabs”, we find that people in:
- Central Arabia referred to themselves as Ma’addites.
- Southern Arabia (Yemen) was organized into kingdoms with particular languages and state structures.
- Eastern Gulf populations were oriented towards Iran with limited political or cultural commonalities with other Arabians.
- Roman/Byzantine and Persian empires in the north warred against each other, creating divisive alliances that blocked pathways by which peoples could unite under a common identity.
Numerically, most of Arabia’s pre-Islamic populations:
- were not Bedouins,
- did not express a common unity,
- none called themselves “Arabs”.
The Elite of the Early Caliphate
According to Peter Webb:
“To find those who did call themselves ‘Arabs’, we must cross into the Islamic period. During the century after Muhammad (d. 632), poetry is recorded in which individuals make novel expressions of being Arab. The first Islamic century is also when Arabic language inscriptions proliferated across Arabia and the Middle East.”
“The evidence indicates that people became conscious of being Arab and took the first tangible steps to define Arab identity after their conversion to Islam. The first people who called themselves Arabs were the elite of the early Caliphate. They inhabited new towns founded by Muslims across the Middle East (e.g. the places known as Cairo, Basra, Baghdad), and they rigorously distinguished themselves from Bedouin.”
Being Arab did not signify a sense of Arabian nomadic origin but a means for early Muslims to express what it meant to belong to their exclusive group of converts to Islam.
Arab-ness emerged as an end-product of the success of early Islam’s conquest and reorganization of the Middle East.
Who are the “Arabs”…A Storehouse of ‘Facts” or Just Myths and Legends
These newly Islamic “Arab” people needed to construct a shared sense of their past to become one pan-Arabian ethnic group. Moreover, because these “Arabs” were from various backgrounds, their sense of past unity was based on myths and legends. Therefore, in the case of early Islam, these Islamic Arabs created myths about pre-Islamic “Arab” origins to replace pre-Arabic memories.
Webb states: “Their vast library of Arabic literature invoking memories of pre-Islam was considered a storehouse of ‘facts’ about pre-Islamic Arab ways. However, now we understand that pre-Islamic Arab-ness was a myth, cobbled together by Muslims to create a novel sense of mythic “Arab history.”
In Closing
Repeat a lie often enough… What was the goal and hope of the leaders of this new religion? That new converts would forget the fact that the “Arab identity” only began in the Islamic era and not from time immemorial as those in our recent generations claim. Using much propaganda i.e. lies, they have been successful in their mission.
In my next post, I will look further into the Islamic era and its “Arab identity”. Until then I am Passionately Loving Jesus who is the Anchor of my soul!
Maranatha!
Do you have a relationship with Jesus Christ?
Other Articles in this Series
Sources
- https://www.stmichaelsrec.com/2016/09/11/from-ishmael-to-mohammad/
- https://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Ishmael
- Jewish Virtual Library
- Imagining the Arabs: Arab Identity and the Rise of Islam
- https://www.gotquestions.org/descendants-of-Ishmael.html
Mitchel Bard is the Executive Director of the nonprofit American-Israeli Cooperative Enterprise (AICE) and a foreign policy analyst as well as the director of the Jewish Virtual Library.
Dr Peter Webb is a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow at the School of Oriental and African Studies, London.
