(This is a translation from the original Arabic, offered so that my grandchildren, and others of their generation, may understand something of their history— a history they were denied when they were uprooted without choice.)
Introduction
When the term “we Arabs” is used in this context, it does not denote a people distinguished by racial homogeneity. Inquiry into the origins of human groups inevitably reaches the limits of recorded history, beyond which accounts become transmitted narratives often interwoven with myth or aspiration. Consequently, any serious scholarly investigation requires a clearly defined point of departure upon which analysis and inference may reasonably be constructed.
The land inhabited by Arabs for millennia—here referred to as the Fertile Crescent or Mesopotamia—extends from the Arabian Sea and the Arabian Gulf east of the Tigris River, northward to the headwaters of the twin rivers in Asia Minor, and westward to the Mediterranean Sea. This region has long been home to multiple peoples whose existence coincided with that of the Arabs. Scholarly examination reveals that what unites these peoples is a marked similarity in their languages, at times approaching near identity. Such linguistic convergence leads to the rational conclusion that these groups originated from a common source.
The combination of linguistic affinity and shared geography gave rise to the classification of these peoples as Semitic, traditionally traced to Shem, the son of Noah. Whether this genealogical origin is historically verifiable is of limited importance, as it does not alter the demonstrable reality of a shared cultural and historical foundation. In the absence of written records from the era attributed to Noah, definitive historical proof remains unattainable. Nevertheless, transmitted traditions widely accepted in the region maintain that Abraham (peace be upon him) married both an Arab woman and a Hebrew woman, lending support to the claim that these communities coexisted within the same geographical space.
Coexistence among peoples naturally entails intermingling, intermarriage, and gradual cultural fusion. The emergence of Semitic religions within the region further accelerated this process, as shared religious affiliation rendered intermarriage not merely permissible but socially desirable.
The advent of Islam, accompanied by the revelation of the Qur’an, decisively strengthened the position of the Arabic language at the expense of other Semitic languages. Consequently, the influence of several Semitic communities declined to the point of near extinction, along with their languages. Aramaic—once the language of civilization, including within the Persian Empire, and the language spoken by Jesus Christ (peace be upon him)—survives today only among small communities. For multiple reasons, the Qur’an altered the prior pattern of interaction among Semitic languages, establishing Arabic as the dominant linguistic medium and the most comprehensive representative of the Semitic linguistic family, if such a classification is accepted.
With the establishment of the Abbasid state, political and cultural influence expanded across the entirety of the Fertile Crescent and beyond. As populations historically gravitate toward imperial centres in pursuit of opportunity, Baghdad and its surrounding regions attracted people from across the Eastern world. The Western world, by contrast, remained in a state of relative cultural stagnation at the time. In the absence of the restrictive migration policies characteristic of the modern era, the region experienced extensive migration by Semitic and non-Semitic peoples alike. These populations collectively merged into Abbasid society. The fall of Baghdad to Hulagu did not fundamentally alter this reality, as the Qur’an continued to sustain the dominance of the Arabic language throughout the region.
During the zenith of the Abbasid state, the region’s inhabitants made substantial contributions to human knowledge across diverse fields of inquiry. This phenomenon is characteristic of expansive empires that provide intellectual and economic opportunity, irrespective of the costs borne elsewhere. These contributions were articulated in Arabic and consequently attributed to Arab civilization, even though many contributors were not ethnically Arab. Such distinctions were largely irrelevant at the time, as intellectual participation was not conditioned upon ethnic origin. This circumstance is comparable to modern contexts in which individuals’ achievements are attributed to the societies in which they worked; for example, the German scientist who developed early rocket technology in the United States following World War II is commonly regarded as American rather than German.
In summary, the region, through its Arab identity, came to embody the historical, intellectual, and cultural heritage of the Semitic peoples who successively inhabited it, both those who disappeared and those who remain. The Arab identity recognized globally since the emergence of Islam—and largely unchanged to this day—may thus be understood as the identity of the Semitic region itself.
Contemporary Arabs are not merely the descendants of tribes that migrated following the retreat of the last Ice Age, nor solely the progeny of so-called “pure” Arab tribes, such as the Nabataeans of Iraq who later settled in the Arabian Peninsula. Rather, modern Arabs represent a composite of numerous Semitic tribes alongside peoples of diverse, non-regional origins who settled in the area, intermarried with its inhabitants, and were linguistically assimilated into Arabic—much as English came to dominate among populations settling in North America.
From this perspective, Arabs today are those who speak Arabic and possess a sense of belonging to the Arab collective. While linguistic competence may be relatively uncontested, the definition and scope of belonging to the Arab nation remain subject to debate.
The purpose of this introduction is to clarify what this region has represented to Europe in general, and how this perception shaped European policies and attitudes over several centuries.
Intellectual development in this region occurred during periods in which Europe lagged significantly in scientific and philosophical advancement. From the intellectual traditions of the Fertile Crescent and its peripheries emerged what later came to be known as Greek thought, which was in fact deeply rooted in the intellectual heritage of this region. Although this claim warrants extensive analysis beyond the scope of the present discussion, it is difficult to maintain that Greek philosophy and science arose spontaneously at the margins of a flourishing intellectual centre while Europe itself lacked comparable foundations. Scientific and philosophical traditions are cumulative in nature, not accidental. In the absence of indigenous European foundations, ancient Greek thinkers must have drawn substantially upon the intellectual resources of the Near East.
This observation is essential to understanding subsequent European historical developments and actions in the region during the Middle Ages and particularly following the Industrial Revolution. One indication of the connection between ancient Greek culture and the cultures of this region lies in the Greek alphabet itself, which is of Semitic origin. The first four letters—Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta—correspond directly to Alif, Bāʾ, Jīm, Dāl in Arabic and Hebrew. Scholars generally agree that the Greeks adopted the alphabet from the people they termed the Phoenicians, known historically as the Canaanites, a Semitic group that coexisted with other Semitic peoples and engaged in extensive trade and travel throughout the Mediterranean.
Furthermore, scholars have traced several Greek scientific theories to Mesopotamian antecedents, most notably the principle of the right angle, later formalized as the Pythagorean theorem.
The ancient Greeks produced a philosophical corpus whose influence endures to the present day, with the works of Aristotle and Plato continuing to be studied and debated. They also established foundational principles in natural science, adopted and expanded upon Babylonian mathematics, and advanced astronomical knowledge that the Babylonians had developed earlier. As a result, Greek thought constituted a distinctive and enduring contribution to human civilization, carefully preserved through systematic documentation.
When intellectual inquiry flourished under the Abbasid state, its scholars—like those of any advanced civilization—engaged deeply with the intellectual heritage of earlier cultures. Greek thought received particular attention, alongside scientific knowledge transmitted from India. Recognizing its value, Caliph al-Maʾmūn ibn Hārūn al-Rashīd initiated an unprecedented translation movement that rendered Greek works into Arabic. This effort catalyzed significant advances in mathematics, chemistry, natural sciences, astronomy, and medicine. Given that Islamic jurists generally regarded philosophy with reservation, Muslim thinkers expressed philosophical ideas primarily through commentary on Greek texts rather than through independent philosophical treatises.
In this manner, scholars of the Abbasid era made lasting contributions to the shared intellectual heritage of humanity—contributions acknowledged even by critics of Arab civilization. Terms such as algebra and algorithm bear enduring witness to this legacy, the latter named in honour of al-Khwarizmi. Western scholarship likewise recognizes the Arab polymath al-Hasan ibn al-Haytham as a pioneer in the study of light, anticipating concepts later formalized in modern physics. Numerous additional examples defy concise enumeration.
In conclusion, Baghdad in the tenth century CE may be regarded as the cultural and intellectual heir to Athens, just as Athens itself inherited the legacies of earlier centres such as Ur and Babylon. Baghdad’s achievement lay in articulating and consolidating a cultural heritage accumulated over millennia within the Fertile Crescent, framing it within a vibrant Arab intellectual tradition.
To be continued.