Arab migrations to the Levant in the context of "Philip the Arab"

The tribes of Arabia (Arabic: القبائل العربية) have inhabited the Arabian Peninsula for thousands of years and traditionally trace their ancestry to one of two forefathers: Adnan, whose descendants originate from West Arabia, North Arabia, East Arabia, and Central Arabia; or Qahtan, whose descendants originate from South Arabia. Further, it is held in the Abrahamic religions—particularly Islam—that the Arab people are descended from Abraham through his son Ishmael.

From the 7th century onward, concurrent with the spread of Islam, many of these tribes' members began migrating and settling in the various regions that were subdued during the early Muslim conquests, including the Levant, Mesopotamia, Egypt, Khuzestan, the Maghreb, and Sudan. This phenomenon triggered a process of Arabization that significantly influenced demographic shifts across most of West Asia and North Africa, culminating in the growth of the Arab population far beyond the Arabian Peninsula.

Arabization or Arabicization (Arabic: تعريب, romanized: taʻrīb) is a sociological process of cultural change in which a non-Arab society becomes Arab, meaning it either directly adopts, is forced to accept, or becomes strongly influenced by the Arabic language, culture, literature, art, music, and ethnic identity as well as other socio-cultural factors. It is a specific form of cultural assimilation that often includes a language shift or linguistic imperialism. The term applies not only to cultures, but also to individuals, as they acclimate to Arab culture and become "Arabized". Arabization took place after the Muslim conquest of the Middle East and North Africa, as well as during the more recent Arab nationalist policies toward non-Arabic speaking minorities in modern Arab states, such as Algeria, Iraq, Syria, Egypt, Bahrain, and Sudan.

After the rise of Islam in the Hejaz and subsequent Muslims conquests, Arab culture and language spread outside the Arabian Peninsula through trade and intermarriages between members of the non-Arab local population and the peninsular Arabs. The Arabic language began to serve as a lingua franca in these areas and various dialects were formed. This process was accelerated by the migration of various Arab tribes outside of Arabia, such as the Arab migrations to the Maghreb and the Levant.

The history of the Arabs is recorded to have begun in the mid-9th century BCE, corresponding with the earliest known attestation of Old Arabic. Tradition in the Abrahamic religions holds that Arabs are the descendants of Ishmael, who was the son of the Hebrew patriarch Abraham and his Egyptian concubine Hagar. The Syrian Desert, which includes an extension of the Arabian Peninsula, is the home of the first attested "Arab" groups, as well as other defined Arab groups that spread in the land and existed for millennia.

Before the expansion of the Rashidun Caliphate (632–661) during the early Muslim conquests, the word "Arab" referred to any of the largely nomadic or settled Arab tribes in the Arabian Peninsula, the Levant, and Upper and Lower Mesopotamia. Today, "Arab" refers to a variety of large numbers of people whose native regions form the Arab world due to Arab migrations and the concurrent spread of the Arabic language throughout the region, namely the Levant and the Maghreb, following the rise of Islam in the 7th century. During this period, they forged the Rashidun Caliphate (632–661), the Umayyad Caliphate (661–750), and the Abbasid Caliphate (750–1258). These Arab dynasties ruled some of the largest land empires in history, reaching southern France in the west, China in the east, Anatolia in the north, and Sudan in the south. In 1517, the Mamluk Sultanate of Cairo was conquered by the Ottoman Empire, which went on to rule much of the Arab world until World War I, after which it was defeated and dissolved and its territories partitioned, forming the modern Arab states. Following the adoption of the Alexandria Protocol in 1944, the Arab League was founded on 22 March 1945. The Charter of the Arab League endorsed the principle of an Arab homeland while respecting the individual sovereignty of its member states.