Introduction

Although divided into thirteen sovereign states, the eighty-nine million inhabitants of the Arab East are remarkably homogeneous. They share a common language, culture and – excepting parts of Lebanon – religion. They believe in the concept of the Arab Nation (Umma al Arabiya), and are proud of the predominance enjoyed by the Arabs in Islam and Islamic history. The principal dimensions of Arab nationhood appear to be a collective awareness of a common history, a distinctive language and culture (literature, art, folkways), a degree of similarity in appearance – which is not racial since the Arabs are an amalgam of races and do not practise racial exclusivity – and a historic, geographic homeland’, states Michael C. Hudson, an American specialist on the Middle East. ¹