The Maghreb (/ˈmɑːɡrəb/; Arabic: ْاَلْمَغْرِب, romanized: al-Maghrib, lit. 'The place where the sun sets' [ælˈmaɣrɪb] ), also known as the Arab Maghreb (Arabic: اَلْمَغْرِبُ الْعَرَبِيُّ, romanized: al-Maghrib al-ʿArabi, lit. 'the Arab west'), the Greater Maghreb (Arabic: المغرب الكبير al-Maghrib al-Kabīr), and Northwest Africa, is the western part of the Arab world. The region comprises western and central North Africa, including Algeria, Libya, Mauritania, Morocco, and Tunisia. The Maghreb also includes the disputed territory of Western Sahara. As of 2018, the region had a population of over 100 million people.
The Maghreb is usually defined as encompassing much of the northern part of Africa, including a large portion of the Sahara Desert, but excluding Egypt and Sudan, which are considered to be located in the Mashriq—the eastern part of the Arab world. The traditional definition of the Maghreb—which restricted its scope to the Atlas Mountains and the coastal plains of Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia and Libya—was expanded in modern times to include Mauritania and the disputed territory of Western Sahara. During the era of al-Andalus on the Iberian Peninsula (711–1492), the Maghreb's inhabitants—the Muslim Maghrebis—were known by Europeans as the "Moors". The Greeks referred to the region as the "Land of the Atlas", referring to its Atlas Mountains.
