ABSTRACT
Islam is a religion that was founded in the 600s ce. This, along with Christianity and Judaism, is a major religion in the Middle East. Arab is an ethnic and/or cultural marker. Many people speak Arabic who claims other ethnic heritages. Egyptian civilization is one of the six major original civilizations which developed largely independently of one another at roughly the same period. Islam is a major factor in the development of culture in this region. Depending on how one defines literature, Arabic literature before 1800 consisted almost entirely of poetry. The Arabic language is, however, along with European languages, one of the largest forces in the region. Nadha is both a general term for revolutions in Arabic thought and culture and a term that designates a specific renaissance in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Israel has produced a great deal of literary and theatrical criticism. To a large extent, this has been incorporated into the Western academy.
