Who Are the Arabs ?

Are they a people who go back further in history than the name they are known by today ? Most probably they are the origin of the Semitic race from which have branched out the chaldeans, Assyrians, Canaanites and Hebrews and all other Semitic people that settled between the two rivers, Palestine and the surrounding desert and towns. The Abyssinian people may be connected with the Arab people by Genealogy although they are a mixture of Semites and Hamites

Each of these people talks in one of the different dialects of the one language, which is the origin of the Semitic languages. The signs of this language is the common 3-letter verb construction in all its branches; the similarity of their pronouns and vocabulary, and a great many roots and derivatives. A further evidence was the resemblance between their physical traits before their marriage on a large scale into the surrounding African and Asian peoples.

If all these peoples have one origin, it is most probable and most conceivable that this origin stems from the Arab Peninsula for the following reasons:

	The change-over of the people from pastoral life to agricultural life is a stage in the normal evolution of history; it is abnormal that people change from a settled town-life to a pasture-life in the desert.
	The Peninsula of Arabia - in is well-known isolation - is the most conservative of places and maintains its original state, it is also the most place short of the necessary feeding resources to satisfy its inhabitants, a fact that impels them to emigrate to the neighboring river-valleys.

It was established that emigration in remote and near ages of history was from the directions of Bahrain and the holy places, the most recent instance took place after Islam with simultaneous movement of Arabs to Iraq and Syria in the reign of the Caliph Abu Bakr Al-Siddiq.

There is nothing to prevent modern history from being used as evidence for ancient history, particularly when it is completely devoid of stories, whether known or inferred, about the emigration of riverine people and the inhabitants of river-valleys to the peninsula of Arabia in remote or recent times. The Sumerians who inhabited the area between the two ancient rivers, were there 10,000 years ago, and in has been established that the Semites were the people who left their homeland and moved to the area between the Two Rivers where had risen capitals bearing Semitic names such as Babel (Bab-Allah or Bab Ayel).

There is another viewpoint which claims that the Semites rose in another place than the Arabian Peninsula:

This view is strongly voiced by the renowned Professor (Guidi the Great), an Italian scientist well-known in Cairo. This scientist bases his argument on the similarity between the Semitic languages and the numerous names of plants and waters in their earliest Dialects. He believes that the common use of this vocabulary in the Semitic languages indicates an origin in fertile hands, abounding in plantation and rivers, and not in the Arabian desert and its like.

This view is flimsy because it is not founded on strong grounds; nor does the condition of the Arabian Peninsula prevailing long before modern discoveries support it. Further evidence comes from the condition of the Peninsula as indicated by the discoveries of stratigraphy, climatology and anthropology.

Vast meadows and fertile lands were by no means unknown in the Southern and North-Eastern parts of the Peninsula at Bahrain and Yamama Valley. These places were frequented by emigrants in ancient times; sometimes those emigrants came from Yemen to Bahrain, and beyond Bahrain to the area between the Two Rivers the Syrian desertland; sometimes they proceeded from the first parts of Bahrain to its Northern outskirts.

The site of Yamama remained after Islam, renowned for its vast pasture-land, gurgling springs heavy rainfall and dense meadows which were the remnants or a more fertile and inhabitable land in former times. The German traveler Schoenvert noticed that wheat, barley, buffaloes, goats, mutton and cattle had been found in Yemen and ancient Arabia before they were domesticated in Egypt and Iraq.

According to the latest scientific discoveries, the Arabian Peninsula was exposed in the very ancient times to drought and earth-quakes. Aridity superseded fertility over the ages until the land had mostly turned to desert by historic times. The state of the Arabian Peninsula is sufficient to explain the resemblance between the Semitic languages in the words «fertility, fruits, water», but the other view, that Professor Guidi, does not explain the hypothesis that the Arabs had emigrated, say from between the Two Rivers or from Syria to the arid desertland. This hypothesis rests on no evidence either in the early accounts, or in plausible circumstances and familiar precedents, of which examples are given in modern history.

we can therefore state that descendants of the Arabs originating in their first Peninsula have lived in the middle of the habitable world for 5,000 years at least, and that whatever benefits Europeans have obtained from these regions throughout the ages was an Arab heritage or a heritage which spread in the world after the Arabs had admixed with the people of other countries.

This heritage is not small because it includes the original concepts for Europeans - of Reason, Spirit, and the causes of civilization which are : (1) Religious beliefs (2) Art of living and conduct (3) Arts of writing and education (4) Art of peace and war and the exchange of goods.