Arab diaspora (Arabic: الشتات العربي, romanized: ash-shatāt al-ʿarabī) is a term that refers to descendants of the Arab emigrants who, voluntarily or forcibly, migrated from their native lands to non-Arab countries, primarily in the Americas, Europe, Southeast Asia, and West Africa.
Immigrants from Arab countries, such as Lebanon, Syria and Palestine, also form significant diasporas in other Arab states – see Palestinian refugees and refugees of the Syrian civil war.
Central Asian Arabic or Jugari Arabic (Arabic: العربية الآسيوية الوسطى) refers to a set of four closely related varieties of Arabic currently facing extinction and spoken predominantly by Arab communities living in portions of Central Asia. These varieties are Bactrian (or Bakhtāri/Baxtāri) Arabic, Bukharan (or Bukhāri/Buxāri) Arabic, Qashqa Darya (or Kashka-darya) Arabic, and Khorasani (or Xorasāni) Arabic.
The Central Asian Arabic varieties are markedly different from all other Arabic language varieties, especially in their syntax and to a lesser extent, morphology, which have been heavily influenced by the surrounding Western Iranian and Turkic languages. They are, however, relatively conservative in their lexicon and phonology. While they bear certain similarities with North Mesopotamian Arabic, they constitute an independent linguistic branch of Arabic, the Central Asian family.
Arabs (Arabic: عَرَب) are an ethnic group mainly inhabiting the Arab world in West Asia and North Africa. A significant Arab diaspora is present in various parts of the world. Before the spread of Arabic language in the wake of the Arab conquests, "Arab" largely referred to the Semitic inhabitants—both settled and nomadic—of the Arabian Peninsula and the Syrian Desert. In modern usage, it includes people from across the Greater Middle East that share Arabic as a native language.
Arabs have been in the Fertile Crescent for thousands of years. In the 9th century BCE, the Assyrians made written references to Arabs as inhabitants of the Levant, Mesopotamia, and Arabia. Throughout the Ancient Near East, Arabs established influential civilizations starting from 3000 BCE onwards, such as Dilmun, Gerrha, and Magan, playing a vital role in trade between Mesopotamia, and the Mediterranean. Other prominent tribes include Midian, ʿĀd, and Thamud mentioned in the Bible and Quran. Later, in 900 BCE, the Qedarites enjoyed close relations with the nearby Canaanite and Aramaean states, and their territory extended from Lower Egypt to the Southern Levant. From 1200 BCE to 110 BCE, powerful kingdoms emerged such as Saba, Lihyan, Minaean, Qataban, Hadhramaut, Awsan, and Homerite emerged in Arabia. According to the Abrahamic tradition, Arabs are descendants of Abraham through his son Ishmael.
The phenomenon of large-scale migration of Christians is the main reason why Christians' share of the population has been declining in many countries. Many Muslim countries have witnessed disproportionately high emigration rates among their Christian minorities for several generations. Today, most Middle Eastern people in the United States are Christians, and the majority of Arabs living outside the Arab World are Arab Christians.
Push factors motivating Christians to emigrate include religious discrimination, persecution, and cleansing. Pull factors include prospects of upward mobility as well as joining relatives abroad.
The Palestinian diaspora (Arabic: الشتات الفلسطيني, al-shatat al-filastini), part of the wider Arab diaspora, refers to Palestinians living outside the region of Palestine and Israel. There are about 6.1 million members of the Palestinian diaspora, most of whom live in Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, and Chile.
The Moroccan diaspora (Arabic: الجالية المغربية), part of the wider Arab diaspora, consists of emigrants from Morocco and their descendants. An estimated 3 million Moroccans live abroad, with the majority of the diaspora being located in Western Europe, especially France and Spain.
Arabic is a language cluster comprising 30 or so modern varieties. Its various dialects are spoken by around 422 million speakers (native and non-native) in the Arab world, as well as in the Arab diaspora. The number of speakers makes it one of the five most spoken languages in the world.
Arabic is the lingua franca of people who live in countries of the Arab world as well as of Arabs who live in the diaspora, particularly in Latin America (especially Brazil, Argentina, Venezuela, Chile and Colombia) or Western Europe (like France, Spain, Germany or Italy).