The process of Arabisation in the Middle East

This is a question I've been wondering, how exactly did the process of Arabisation of places such as the Levant and Egypt occur, and how long did the process occur.
The Arabisation of the Maghreb, Al-Andalus and Persia (mostly the failure of it in this case) is relatively well documented, but what about the areas that already spoke Semitic languages?
Surely it did not just occur as segments of the population became Muslim, there must have been a period where there was a large amount of Muslims who spoke languages such as Coptic or perhaps Syria as primary languages. Also, how quickly did they adopt Arabic/Arabian culture such as dress, naming customs etc, and leave their own communities behind.
Also, at what point was this process complete? The Abbasid/Fatimid 10th century? The Crusades? The Mamluke era?
The details of this cultural transition would be fascinating to hear about.
 
As you says, it's really hard because the cultural differenciation between different communities in Near East was hard : Christians used a language close to Arabs, Jews had similar religious practices and all had long-lasting contacts with their neighbours since Antiquity.

We know that Arabisation generally happened quicker than Islamisation itself, and I don't think Syria or Iraq saw anything most different : meaning that while they kept a large Christian demographic up to the end of Crusades, Arabic was probably dominant as a public language (doesn't mean it was dominant as a native language, tough).

Even if Syriac, for instance, likely survived after the 10th century as a vernacular language, its absence of institutional and large public role made it more vulnerable to political events and to fragmentation : dyglossic situations happened really quickly and were really pushing non-Arabic languages to irrelevance slowly but surely (by the end of Middle Ages, it mostly became identitarian)

So, it's more the reverse that can be observed : not Muslims that have to speak Syriac or other languages, but Christians having to use Arab on a large basis even if their own identitarian languages survived outside the public sphere.

As an asid, Arabisation of Persia being a failure...It's really more complicated : whole Persian regions as Mesopotamia were trough and trough Arabized, and Persian language itself recieved a lot of Arabic influence that were downsized if not removed as part of actual policies from Islamized Persian states (critically after Savafids) while Arabisation was carried as a policy among all its western neighbours : meaning that the original difference, that wasn't that radically obvious, only grew with time.

So, yes, it's an eventual backleash, but far from a total one IMO.
 
As you says, it's really hard because the cultural differenciation between different communities in Near East was hard : Christians used a language close to Arabs, Jews had similar religious practices and all had long-lasting contacts with their neighbours since Antiquity.

We know that Arabisation generally happened quicker than Islamisation itself, and I don't think Syria or Iraq saw anything most different : meaning that while they kept a large Christian demographic up to the end of Crusades, Arabic was probably dominant as a public language (doesn't mean it was dominant as a native language, tough).

Even if Syriac, for instance, likely survived after the 10th century as a vernacular language, its absence of institutional and large public role made it more vulnerable to political events and to fragmentation : dyglossic situations happened really quickly and were really pushing non-Arabic languages to irrelevance slowly but surely (by the end of Middle Ages, it mostly became identitarian)

So, it's more the reverse that can be observed : not Muslims that have to speak Syriac or other languages, but Christians having to use Arab on a large basis even if their own identitarian languages survived outside the public sphere.

As an asid, Arabisation of Persia being a failure...It's really more complicated : whole Persian regions as Mesopotamia were trough and trough Arabized, and Persian language itself recieved a lot of Arabic influence that were downsized if not removed as part of actual policies from Islamized Persian states (critically after Savafids) while Arabisation was carried as a policy among all its western neighbours : meaning that the original difference, that wasn't that radically obvious, only grew with time.

So, yes, it's an eventual backleash, but far from a total one IMO.

Some additional notes:
Mesopotamia was largely linguistically Aramaic before Islam under the Sasanids, with an already established Arabic presence, unlike the Iranian plateau.
That said, Persian underwent major linguistic change determined by the Arabic superstrate. The process is complex, and it is important to keep what happened in the written standards and what occurred in the spoken vernaculars separate (the latter is largely hard to know anything about because we lack sources).

The Aramaic-speaking areas, essentially Mesopotamia and the Levant, underwent a relatively quick Arabisation whose beginnings, at least in some areas (critically, a large portion of the Euphrates valley) even predate Islam.*
AFAIK, the avalaible data suggest that Arabic spread pretty quickly over most of the Fertile Crescent and beyond, and that forms of Arabic (pretty broadly intended) were already spoken in the Jazira, Inner Syria and the Lower Euphrates before Islam. This is includes not negliglible communities of Arabophone Christians.
This process may be considered roughly complete by about the tenth century.
In Egypt, the overall pace was probably slower, but we know that Arabic was already dominant by that point.
The fact that substrate influx on vernacular Arabic is relatively small in these areas (as opposed to what is seen in Maghrib, where Berber influence on local Arabic appears to be stronger, and in Yemen, where Ancient South Arabic also exerted a fairly major impact) also suggest a "short" period of bilingualism before language replacement.
It is worth noting that in what used to be Khorasan (modern Uzbekistan and Afghanistan, mostly) there are still groups who speak vernacular Arabic, in a form that underwent considerable change through contact with neighboring Iranic and Turkic languages.
They differ from their more westerly fellow Arab-speakers in that Classical Arabic has not been, in their historical milieu, the primary prestige languae, so that the continuum between Classical/Standard and vernacular is broken. This is also clearly suggestive of a very early Arabization.


*Political entities where an "Arab" ethnic element was important and recognizable had already played a part in the revival of Aramaic as a written language - in a time where the dominant written standard was Greek.
 
Al-Jazira remained a predominantly Aramaic-speaking, Assyrian Christian populated region up until the slaughter committed by Timur in the late 14th century. Following this, the region was gradually overrun by Arabs from the south and Kurds from the east/south-east.

As with all historical demography, it's hard to give exact statistics, but we know that the Coptic Christians were still the majority in Egypt until at least the end of the 12th century; it is likely they remained the majority until the end of the 13th century. Coptic remained a vernacular language in decline until the 17th century.

Jordan and Iraq south-west of the Euphrates were the earliest non-Arabic places to be Arabised, with Jordan and south-west Iraq being Arabised from the 3rd century onward under the Banu Qasasinah and the Banu Laxm.

A rough timeline of Arabisation:

Prehistory of Arabia: Oman is Arabised with the arrival of the Banu Uman

Before-50 BC: The Nabataeans begin their migration north/north-west into the area surrounding Petra and the Sinai

3rd century AD: The Banu Qasasinah (Ghassanid) and Banu Laxm (Lakhmid) migrate into modern Jordan and south-west Iraq, respectively.

7th century AD: Following the conquest of Ashuristan by the Rashidun, large waves of Arabic peoples sweep into southern Iraq east of the Euphrates, from modern Basra in the south to roughly Samarra or Tikrit in the north. The areas north of this remain Assyrian for the next 750 years or so.

7th century AD onward: Gradual process of Arabisation across the conquered lands of the Caliphate. This is extremely gradual in the coastal Levant, the Maghreb and Egypt.

Early 11th century AD: Arabs begin crossing into the land of Makuria and the various Beja polities south of Egypt along the Red Sea

12th to 13th century AD: Arabs become a definite majority in the lands of Egypt

13th century onward: Decline of Christian Nubia; Arabs begin to gain a foothold in the historically Christian lands in the Sudan

1317: Makuria succumbs to the Mamluks

1390s: Slaughter of the Assyrians in Al-Jazira. They are reduced to a minority in their historic homeland


By the 15th century, most lands that are today majority Arab were by this point already majority Arab. This does not include Morocco or Algeria, which have hard to determine points of a shift from a Berber majority to Arab majority, or the Sudan, which saw the collapse of the Kingdom of Alodia only in the early 16th century.

I hope this helps :)
 
Some additional notes:
Mesopotamia was largely linguistically Aramaic before Islam under the Sasanids, with an already established Arabic presence, unlike the Iranian plateau.
That said, Persian underwent major linguistic change determined by the Arabic superstrate. The process is complex, and it is important to keep what happened in the written standards and what occurred in the spoken vernaculars separate (the latter is largely hard to know anything about because we lack sources).

The Aramaic-speaking areas, essentially Mesopotamia and the Levant, underwent a relatively quick Arabisation whose beginnings, at least in some areas (critically, a large portion of the Euphrates valley) even predate Islam.*
AFAIK, the avalaible data suggest that Arabic spread pretty quickly over most of the Fertile Crescent and beyond, and that forms of Arabic (pretty broadly intended) were already spoken in the Jazira, Inner Syria and the Lower Euphrates before Islam. This is includes not negliglible communities of Arabophone Christians.
This process may be considered roughly complete by about the tenth century.
In Egypt, the overall pace was probably slower, but we know that Arabic was already dominant by that point.
The fact that substrate influx on vernacular Arabic is relatively small in these areas (as opposed to what is seen in Maghrib, where Berber influence on local Arabic appears to be stronger, and in Yemen, where Ancient South Arabic also exerted a fairly major impact) also suggest a "short" period of bilingualism before language replacement.
It is worth noting that in what used to be Khorasan (modern Uzbekistan and Afghanistan, mostly) there are still groups who speak vernacular Arabic, in a form that underwent considerable change through contact with neighboring Iranic and Turkic languages.
They differ from their more westerly fellow Arab-speakers in that Classical Arabic has not been, in their historical milieu, the primary prestige languae, so that the continuum between Classical/Standard and vernacular is broken. This is also clearly suggestive of a very early Arabization.


*Political entities where an "Arab" ethnic element was important and recognizable had already played a part in the revival of Aramaic as a written language - in a time where the dominant written standard was Greek.


Seconded, good response, I would've said basically the same post.

Though in terms of revival of Aramaic, it tended to ebb and flow, at times Aramaic was oppressed and banned and other times flourished, looking at incidents like Maalaula are evidence of Aramaen Muslims. The arabization was extremely complex, especially in Syria.

This is also not counting the massive effect of Arab migration from Yemen and the Najd, which accounts for the rapid advance of Arabic in Iraq.
 
Also just because Arab is the only language someone speaks doesn't mean someone considers themselves Arabic, until quite recently in a lot of Arab-speaking areas "Arab" meant bedouin.
 
What was spoken in Egypt at this point? How come Greek never pushed out Aramaic in Levant and Mesopotamia?
 
What was spoken in Egypt at this point? How come Greek never pushed out Aramaic in Levant and Mesopotamia?

Coptic almost universally by the lower class, middle class was mostly bilingual in Greek and Coptic (the rest exclusively Greek), upper class most all Greek speaking.

A lot of that I think has to do with the fact that Aramaic became associated with a very well-organised church and literary tradition. Similar to why Greek never displaced Armenian. Am I right here?
 
Coptic almost universally by the lower class, middle class was mostly bilingual in Greek and Coptic (the rest exclusively Greek), upper class most all Greek speaking.

A lot of that I think has to do with the fact that Aramaic became associated with a very well-organised church and literary tradition. Similar to why Greek never displaced Armenian. Am I right here?

I think most if not all educated Egyptians would have been fully literate in both Greek and Coptic: Latin too in a lot of cases.

Anyway, yes. "Coptic" as opposed to just "Egyptian" refers to the liturgical language that became associated with the anti-Chalcedonian churches after 451, but was in use before that. Coptic is the Egyptian language transliterated into the Greek alphabet, with a significant Greek element grafted on. It's worth remembering in this context that the whole Chalcedonian debate only really can be properly understood and expressed in the Greek language: this was a debate between educated Greek speaking Romans, as opposed to proto-nationalist Copts and their Byzantine colonial overlords.

Back to the OP: Aiui, the early Arab conquerors were in many ways chauvinistic racists who actively discouraged their newly conquered peoples from adopting the Arab language and worship of proto-Islam. This began to break down from the 670s onward, and documents were issued in Arabic rather than Greek from the year 700: nice and simple to remember. I'm pretty sure that in Egypt at least, Arabic, Greek and Coptic were all used alongside one another until the ninth century though.
 
Al-Jazira remained a predominantly Aramaic-speaking, Assyrian Christian populated region up until the slaughter committed by Timur in the late 14th century. Following this, the region was gradually overrun by Arabs from the south and Kurds from the east/south-east.

As with all historical demography, it's hard to give exact statistics, but we know that the Coptic Christians were still the majority in Egypt until at least the end of the 12th century; it is likely they remained the majority until the end of the 13th century. Coptic remained a vernacular language in decline until the 17th century.

Jordan and Iraq south-west of the Euphrates were the earliest non-Arabic places to be Arabised, with Jordan and south-west Iraq being Arabised from the 3rd century onward under the Banu Qasasinah and the Banu Laxm.

A rough timeline of Arabisation:

Prehistory of Arabia: Oman is Arabised with the arrival of the Banu Uman

Before-50 BC: The Nabataeans begin their migration north/north-west into the area surrounding Petra and the Sinai

3rd century AD: The Banu Qasasinah (Ghassanid) and Banu Laxm (Lakhmid) migrate into modern Jordan and south-west Iraq, respectively.

7th century AD: Following the conquest of Ashuristan by the Rashidun, large waves of Arabic peoples sweep into southern Iraq east of the Euphrates, from modern Basra in the south to roughly Samarra or Tikrit in the north. The areas north of this remain Assyrian for the next 750 years or so.

7th century AD onward: Gradual process of Arabisation across the conquered lands of the Caliphate. This is extremely gradual in the coastal Levant, the Maghreb and Egypt.

Early 11th century AD: Arabs begin crossing into the land of Makuria and the various Beja polities south of Egypt along the Red Sea

12th to 13th century AD: Arabs become a definite majority in the lands of Egypt

13th century onward: Decline of Christian Nubia; Arabs begin to gain a foothold in the historically Christian lands in the Sudan

1317: Makuria succumbs to the Mamluks

1390s: Slaughter of the Assyrians in Al-Jazira. They are reduced to a minority in their historic homeland


By the 15th century, most lands that are today majority Arab were by this point already majority Arab. This does not include Morocco or Algeria, which have hard to determine points of a shift from a Berber majority to Arab majority, or the Sudan, which saw the collapse of the Kingdom of Alodia only in the early 16th century.

I hope this helps :)

Oddly enough, while your post seems well-informed, it reports a considerably longer timeline than what I can glean from my sources at hand.
The divergence may be partly explained by different source biases, but it is important to point out two very significant discrepancies:
1) Identities, especially ethnolonguistic identities, were historically quite fluid and fuzzy in the traditional Islamicate world (less so for religious identities): many people who spoke some forms Arabic did not identify as "Arabs" ethnically (e.g. because they did not have Arabic tribal ancestry, or only minimally so). "Arab" and related words had shifting meanings across time that are not always easily recoverable in a given context.
The reverse, while rarer, is also true.
Furthermore, while Arabic was closely tied to Islam, there was never a complete overlap between language and religion. Both Aramaic speaking Muslims and (notoriously) Arabic-speaking Christians and Jews existed and still exist. The same holds for Coptic etc.
Finally, bilingualism or multilingualism was very widespread in the Near East, before and after Islam (in different ways, so is today in many areas).
2) It is essential to distinguish spoken and standard language, which spread differently.
 
Oddly enough, while your post seems well-informed, it reports a considerably longer timeline than what I can glean from my sources at hand.
The divergence may be partly explained by different source biases, but it is important to point out two very significant discrepancies:
1) Identities, especially ethnolonguistic identities, were historically quite fluid and fuzzy in the traditional Islamicate world (less so for religious identities): many people who spoke some forms Arabic did not identify as "Arabs" ethnically (e.g. because they did not have Arabic tribal ancestry, or only minimally so). "Arab" and related words had shifting meanings across time that are not always easily recoverable in a given context.
The reverse, while rarer, is also true.
Furthermore, while Arabic was closely tied to Islam, there was never a complete overlap between language and religion. Both Aramaic speaking Muslims and (notoriously) Arabic-speaking Christians and Jews existed and still exist. The same holds for Coptic etc.
Finally, bilingualism or multilingualism was very widespread in the Near East, before and after Islam (in different ways, so is today in many areas).
2) It is essential to distinguish spoken and standard language, which spread differently.

Thank you for your response, I appreciate it. I think perhaps partly it is also our definitions of Arabisation. I am going by the definition that Arabisation means adopting Arabic as a first language, and assuming an identity of Arab over the original ethnic identity.

For example, the Copts in Egypt today speak Arabic as their every-day tongue, and Coptic is generally only used in services. But I imagine you'd agree, they are definitely still Coptic and not Arab. This I would say was also true for the Assyrians and Berbers until the times I said, roughly (though also even in modern Morocco and Algeria there are still a lot of Berbers, and of course the Assyrians still exist).

Whilst Christian Arabs exist of course, I would say that a major factor in medieval Arabisation was often the adoption of Islam also. It was not an exclusivity, but it was quite frequently hand-in-hand.

If we were going by language, then I would agree that much of the Middle East became Arab much earlier than the dates I said. :)
 
Thank you for your response, I appreciate it. I think perhaps partly it is also our definitions of Arabisation. I am going by the definition that Arabisation means adopting Arabic as a first language, and assuming an identity of Arab over the original ethnic identity.

For example, the Copts in Egypt today speak Arabic as their every-day tongue, and Coptic is generally only used in services. But I imagine you'd agree, they are definitely still Coptic and not Arab. This I would say was also true for the Assyrians and Berbers until the times I said, roughly (though also even in modern Morocco and Algeria there are still a lot of Berbers, and of course the Assyrians still exist).

Whilst Christian Arabs exist of course, I would say that a major factor in medieval Arabisation was often the adoption of Islam also. It was not an exclusivity, but it was quite frequently hand-in-hand.

If we were going by language, then I would agree that much of the Middle East became Arab much earlier than the dates I said. :)

Fair enough.
Many Copts today identify as Arabs, although this is arguably a result of much more recent developments relating to modern nationalism. Of course, most Muslim Arabophone Egyptians, while identifying as Arabs since a long time, have primarily Coptic ancestry as well.
In the Middle Ages, "Arab" was often a matter of tribal lineage, which excluded a large amount of Arabophones from self-defining as such.
Conversely, there are cases in the Maghrib of linguistically Berber tribes who claimed Arabic descent (this also happened in the Persophone East).
 
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