# The Spread of Arabic



## djazairi-arab

Hi just curious to know if anyone has any ideas about this. The Arabic language and it's dialects are spread all over the Arab lands however the Arabs also invaded Persian and modern Afghanistan so why is the Arabic language and identity not as prevalent there. I know the Arabic language was more prevalent in the Arab lands and with re-Arabisation with hilal, maqil and also unlike the Arab lands the Arabs of Persia and afghan assimilated. But does anyone know any other reasons,


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## إسكندراني

My theory - which I think is very viable - is that the original languages in North Africa and the Levant (Berber, Coptic, Aramaic, etc.) are structurally similar to semitic languages like Arabic - at least more so than Persian - so the transition to Arabic was not a big deal. 

Places east of us adopted Persian (then Turkish, in other parts later on) as their literary Islamic language because indo-european languages are fundamentally different to Arabic in grammar and structure - so despite immense numbers of Arabic loanwords into Persian, Turkish, Kurdish, Urdu, etc. - these countries did not become Arabic speaking, though their scholars used to come to Arab countries and learn Arabic on a wider scale than they do today.


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## آمين

> though their scholars used to come to Arab countries and learn Arabic on a wider scale than they do today.



Ha ha! Primary motivation for learning Arabic is the religion. And we have long history and system of learning Classical Arabic in Subcontinent [India, Pakistan...] which we are VERY proud of. And consider er. . . um - superior to any Arabic system going. 

- - -

Persia was an ancient and great civilization - with very strong identity and culture. Old Persian language is older than Arabic - you cannot expect this to be completely replaced. Also further you are from the nucleus then harder it is to control. Arab Khilafah could not exert its power far enough or sustain it across such great land mass. 

Urdu displays marvellous characteristics of taking so many influences and still creating a new languages - its grammar is Hindi [Sanskrit] it vocabulary is a mixture of Arabic, Hindi, Persian and Turkish.  

But I think if Arabic had overcome Persian and able to sustain wider political influence then Arabic would have been the default language. 

There is a lot Persian influence in Afghanistan, India and languages of former USSR states. 

Although Persian was widely used and the official language in Mughal India - but it too could not maintain its influence and was replaced by Urdu a new language which was once considered to be inferior than Persian took over.


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## إسكندراني

Turkic-speakers
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/de/Map-TurkicLanguages4.png
Indo-Iranian speakers (brown)
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/18/Indo-European_branches_map.png
Hamito-Semitic speakers
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/24/Hamito-Semitic_languages.jpg
I hope it is clear that because of language grouping (according to similarity and presumed common origin of separate languages), it is easier for, say, a Somali to learn Arabic than it is for a Persian.


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## Tracer

إسكندراني said:


> My theory - which I think is very viable - is that the original languages in North Africa and the Levant (Berber, Coptic, Aramaic, etc.) are structurally similar to semitic languages like Arabic - at least more so than Persian - so the transition to Arabic was not a big deal.



I agree. It is the principal reason, as you suggest, that Arabic never superceded the native languages of the Perso-Indic-Turkic lands.

Another reason is that Arabic was already spoken throughout the area before the Arab Conquests took place.  True, it was not the main language used, but the idea that the Conquests “introduced” Arabic to the conquered lands is erroneous.  Arabic had been a presence in the greater Mesopotamia area for generations before the Conquests.

_(This linguistic incompatibility is also the reason Arabic never took permanent root in Spain even though Arabic was spoken there for 700 years.)_


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## fdb

Tracer said:


> Arabic was already spoken throughout the area before the Arab Conquests took place.



I am not really sure what you mean by "throughout the area". Iraq, Syria, Palestine (or at least parts of them): yes. Egypt: not very likely. North Africa, Khurasan, Transoxania: certainly not.


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## Tracer

fdb said:


> I am not really sure what you mean by "throughout the area". Iraq, Syria, Palestine (or at least parts of them): yes. Egypt: not very likely. North Africa, Khurasan, Transoxania: certainly not.



Yes, I should have been more clear.  I meant "the greater Mesopotamia area"  (I think that's fair to say).  As you said, definitely not North Africa, Khurasan, Transoxania.  In these last named, Arabic was obviously introduced into these areas by the Conquests (and all that implied for these areas).


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## berndf

إسكندراني said:


> My theory - which I think is very viable - is that the original languages in North Africa and the Levant (Berber, Coptic, Aramaic, etc.) are structurally similar to semitic languages like Arabic - at least more so than Persian - so the transition to Arabic was not a big deal.
> 
> Places east of us adopted Persian (then Turkish, in other parts later on) as their literary Islamic language because indo-european languages are fundamentally different to Arabic in grammar and structure - so despite immense numbers of Arabic loanwords into Persian, Turkish, Kurdish, Urdu, etc. - these countries did not become Arabic speaking, though their scholars used to come to Arab countries and learn Arabic on a wider scale than they do today.


I very much doubt this is the reason. Arabs simply didn't rule Persia long enough to establish their language: little more than 100 year. The way political power and cultural influence was distributed in the Abbasid caliphate, you could seriously question whether Persia was under Arabic rule or Arabia under Persian rule. And with the establishment of the Buyid Emirates in 934-945, Arab rule over anything east of the Shatt-Al-`Arab was gone for good.


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## Abu Rashid

I would suggest that Persia did become Arabic speaking, but that later it was "re-Persified".

Of course it was never fully Arabicised, as neither was the Maghreb, nor even Sham, which today still contain pre-Arabic languages.

The reason Persian had such a resurgence was mostly due to sectarianism. Persians adopted the Shi'a belief system, and so they separated themselves from the main body of the Islamic world. This sectarian divide led them to cling to their Persian culture and language, and to use them as a means to distinguish themselves from the "Arabic Muslims".


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## berndf

I am not quite sure, denomination played such a big role. Egypt also became Shiite about the same time, yet Arabic had replaced Coptic by the time Saladin conquered it and the country became Sunni again.


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## fdb

The Persians became followers of the Shi'a at the time of the Safavids (16th century). Before that they were overwhelmingly Sunnite.


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## fdb

Abu Rashid said:


> The reason Persian had such a resurgence was mostly due to sectarianism. Persians adopted the Shi'a belief system, and so they separated themselves from the main body of the Islamic world. This sectarian divide led them to cling to their Persian culture and language, and to use them as a means to distinguish themselves from the "Arabic Muslims".



I am afraid this is total rubbish. The New Persian literary language emerged under the patronage of the Samanids and Ghaznavids, both of them staunch Sunnites.


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## NorwegianNYC

But this is an old pattern - Norman never replaced English because the differences were too great and the Normans were too few, Arabic never made serious inroads in Spain because they were too few and too linguistically different, the Turks had no incentive (or need) to adopt a conquered people's language, and in Persia they might have influenced the language, but the cultural and linguistic gap was to wide to be bridged. North Africa is a different story all together. The Afro-Asiatic languages were already established in that region, and the transition from - say - Coptic to Arabic was less of a challenge than for Romance, Turkic or Persian speakers.


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## Christo Tamarin

The question: Arabic replaced Greek, Coptic and Romance in North Africa. Why Arabic did not replace Persian?

My explanation relies on the religion.

As part of the Roman empire, the population of North Africa was Christians: followers of Abraham and adherent to the Allah, the God of Abraham, in particular. They were converted to Islam gradually. Those who were converted to Islam, had to join the muslim community where Arabic was spoken. In this way, the gradual expansion of the muslim community caused the expansion of Arabic in North Africa (and also Syria, Lebanon and the other territories of the Roman empire).

Persia was another empire populated by pagans. Persians were subjects of exigent conversion to Islam. The entire community was converted to Islam and in this way, the community did not switch the language.​


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## berndf

NorwegianNYC said:


> But this is an old pattern - Norman never replaced English because the differences were too great and the Normans were too few, Arabic never made serious inroads in Spain because they were too few and too linguistically different, *the Turks had no incentive (or need) to adopt a conquered people's language, and in Persia they might have influenced the language, but the cultural and linguistic gap was to wide to be bridged*. North Africa is a different story all together. The Afro-Asiatic languages were already established in that region, and the transition from - say - Coptic to Arabic was less of a challenge than for Romance, Turkic or Persian speakers.


Turkish is as far away from Greek as from Persian. Why then did the Turks who conquered Persia assimilate into the Persian culture and language while the Turks who conquered Anatolia didn't? Why do Iranians today speak Farsi and not Turkish and why do the modern Turks speak Turkish and not Greek?


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## Christo Tamarin

berndf said:


> Turkish is as far away from Greek as from Persian. Why then did the Turks who conquered Persia assimilate into the Persian culture and language while the Turks who conquered Anatolia didn't? Why do Iranians today speak Farsi and not Turkish and why do the modern Turks speak Turkish and not Greek?



The Turcophone community in the Middle East being paganic was converted to Islam as a whole and in this way it kept the language. It was the same scheme as that for the Persian language.

Obviously, there was no reason for replacing Persian by Turcic. Rather, Turkophone invaders were assimilated in both Persia and India.

For Anatolia and the Balkans, the same scheme as that for North Africa took place. The population was Christian. Thus, it was converted to Islam gradually. The initial muslim community consisted of Turcophone invaders. Muslim-neophytes (recently converted to Islam) had to leave the Christian community (mostly Hellenophone) and had to join the muslim community where Turkish was spoken. In this way, Turkish was spread in Anatolia and the Balkans.

*Question*: In Messopotamia (present day Iraq), in pre-islamic erra, there was a paganic comminuty speaking Aramaic similar to that speaking Persian. *Why* Persian survived but Aramaic did not? Perhaps, switching between Semitic languages was easier to take place?


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## Perseas

berndf said:


> Turkish is as far away from Greek as from Persian. Why then did the Turks who conquered Persia assimilate into the Persian culture and language while the Turks who conquered Anatolia didn't? Why do Iranians today speak Farsi and not Turkish and why do the modern Turks speak Turkish and not Greek?


  Anatolia became the home of the Ottomans after they had moved there. Specifically, the centre of their state was in the northwestern Anatolia, and yet Bursa became their capital city (1324). Persia was relatively far from that centre or maybe as far as Hungary was.


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## berndf

Christo Tamarin said:


> The Turcophone community in the Middle East being paganic was converted to Islam as a whole and in this way it kept the language.


I can only repeat my question: Why did the Turks who conquered Persia (the Sejuqs) *not* keep their language but assimilated into the Persian culture? By your logic, Iranians should be speaking Turkish today.


Christo Tamarin said:


> In Messopotamia (present day Iraq), in pre-islamic erra, there was a paganic comminuty speaking Aramaic similar to that speaking Persian. Why Persian survived but Aramaic did not? Perhaps, switching between Semitic languages was easier to take place?


There had been Arabic speaking tribes settling in Syria and Mesopotamia before the Islamic conquest. Because Aramaic had been the prestige language and the lingua franca of the region, the number of surviving documents probably suggests a greater importance than the language really had in daily communication.


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## berndf

Perseas said:


> Anatolia became the home of the Ottomans after they had moved there.


I didn't mean the Ottomans. They came much later.


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## Abu Rashid

berndf said:


> I am not quite sure, denomination played such a big role. Egypt also became Shiite about the same time, yet Arabic had replaced Coptic by the time Saladin conquered it and the country became Sunni again.



It was also largely due to the fact the Persian territories were far-off lands, which were not easily dominated by the Caliphate's centralised power. Egypt on the other hand was. Sectarianism was not the only factor, but I think it was a large factor, especially in maintaining the separation.


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## Abu Rashid

fdb said:


> The Persians became followers of the Shi'a at the time of the Safavids (16th century). Before that they were overwhelmingly Sunnite.



Persians began to adopt Shi'ism from its early days as a movement. Yes the majority did not adopt it until Safawi times, but it was an underlying current long before that, and Persian nationalism and Shi'ite sectarianism usually went hand in hand, as both ideologies fed off one another and played to the same tune of separating from the 'Arabic' Caliphate.



fdb said:


> I am afraid this is total rubbish. The New Persian literary language emerged under the patronage of the Samanids and Ghaznavids, both of them staunch Sunnites.



Actually it emerged before this under the Saffarids whose founder was said to have been an Ismaili Shi'ite. And also under the Tabristani Alawis. The region of Persia was a hotbed of Shi'ite sectarianism for centuries before the Safawi empire. It was only during this time that it was forced upon the people as a state-sanctioned sect. And of course there was the Buwayhids who were long before the Safawids.


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## berndf

Abu Rashid said:


> It was also largely due to the fact the Persian territories were far-off lands, which were not easily dominated by the Caliphate's centralised power.


This is a bit upside-down. The (Abbasid) Caliphate's centralised power *was *Persian.


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## fdb

Abu Rashid said:


> Persian nationalism and Shi'ite sectarianism usually went hand in hand



Nationalism is an invention of the 19th century




Abu Rashid said:


> under the Saffarids



three tiny fragments of poetry




Abu Rashid said:


> whose founder was said to have been an Ismaili Shi'ite



for which there is, however, no evidence




Abu Rashid said:


> And of course there was the Buwayhids



who have no connection with Persian language or literature.


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## berndf

Abu Rashid said:


> Persians began to adopt Shi'ism from its early days as a movement.


As did many Arabs. The Abbasids actually won the Caliphate on the Shiite "ticket" and later stayed denominationally neutral.

There was later a Shiite caliphate but its centre was Egypt, not Persia. Your apparent idea of the Golden Era of Islam as the huge Sunni community and a few Shia sectarians on the fringes seems a bit misty-eyed.


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## Abu Rashid

fdb said:


> Nationalism is an invention of the 19th century



I'm not really following there. Are you suggesting there was no form of ethnic patriotism amongst any people until the 20th. century? Surely you are speaking about nationalism which specifically revolves around the concept of a nation-state, not about the concept itself. Anyway this does not impact the linguistic issues here, so don't bother explaining your position.



fdb said:


> three tiny fragments of poetry



They made it their state language. The founder of the dynasty was not even an Arabic speaker, rather rare for someone of his position in that time.



fdb said:


> for which there is, however, no evidence



Nizam ul-Mulk reported it.



fdb said:


> who have no connection with Persian language or literature.



I mentioned them to demonstrate that pre-Safawi Shi'ite states did exist in Persia. And yes Persian was their language of state.


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## fdb

berndf said:


> There was later a Shiite caliphate but its centre was Egypt, not Persia.



And a Shiite (Zaydi) imamate in the Yemen, which lasted for over a thousand years.


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## Abu Rashid

berndf said:


> As did many Arabs.


 
Very few. It was largely a movement amongst disaffected non-Arabs.



berndf said:


> The Abbasids actually won the Caliphate on the Shiite "ticket" and later stayed denominationally neutral.



Yes, as they looked east (towards Persia) for support.



berndf said:


> There was later a Shiite caliphate but its centre was Egypt, not Persia.



The Fatimids were not recognised by the vast bulk of Muslims as a valid Caliphate, so not sure what relevance this has, other than the fact they claimed a title for themselves usually reserved for orthodox Muslim rulers.



berndf said:


> Your apparent idea of the Golden Era of Islam as the huge Sunni community and a few Shia sectarians on the fringes seems a bit misty-eyed.



Given the historical fact of the Rashidun, Ummayyad, Abbassid and finally Ottoman Caliphates, it seems pretty realistic to me. Anyway this is deviating off topic.


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## berndf

fdb said:


> who have no connection with Persian language or literature.


But the Buwayhids were a Shia dynasty ruling the territories of modern Iran and Iraq and they were Persian speaking and of Kurdish descent.

But I agree with you the equation Shia = Persian, Sunni = Arabic makes little sense as the Buwayhids also rules Iraq and the country still has a Shia majority yet is unmistakably Arabic.


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## Abu Rashid

fdb said:


> And a Shiite (Zaydi) imamate in the Yemen, which lasted for over a thousand years.



Thanks for demonstrating for us what berndf meant when he said "a few shia sectarians on the fringes". you would've been better off sticking with the Safawids.


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## Abu Rashid

berndf said:


> But I agree with you the equation Shia = Persian, Sunni = Arabic makes little sense as the Buwayhids also rules Iraq and the country still has a Shia majority yet is unmistakably Arabic.



Of course the distinction is not 100%, just as there are plenty of Persian speaking Sunnis in Iran, Afghanistan, Tajikistan etc.

That was never my point.


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## berndf

Abu Rashid said:


> The Fatimids were not recognised by the vast bulk of Muslims as a valid Caliphate, so not sure what relevance this has, other than the fact they claimed a title for themselves usually reserved for orthodox Muslim rulers.


Since Fatimid caliphate comprised a substantial part of the Muslim world, it is relevant.



Abu Rashid said:


> ...Rashidun...


By definition before the schism, as it was triggered by an event that ended this period (the assassination of Ali).





Abu Rashid said:


> ... Ummayyad...


Yes.





Abu Rashid said:


> ...Abbassid...


Not really. The Abbasid Caliphs we neutral and tried to avoid any of the two denominations to get the upper hand.


Abu Rashid said:


> ...Ottoman Caliphates...


That I wouldn't call golden era any more.


Abu Rashid said:


> Anyway this is deviating off topic.


You argument rests the equation Shia = Persian, Sunni = Arabic. If you withdraw your argument than it is off topic.



Abu Rashid said:


> That was never my point.


What then?


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## fdb

berndf said:


> But the Buwayhids were a Shia dynasty ruling the territories of modern Iran and Iraq and they were Persian speaking



I do not see any evidence for this. The poetry addressed to them is all in Arabic.




berndf said:


> and of Kurdish descent.



Daylami (South of the Caspian Sea), not Kurdish. But we have enough problems already with Persian and Arab nationalists without getting the Kurds involved as well.


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## berndf

fdb said:


> I do not see any evidence for this. The poetry addressed to them is all in Arabic.


Is this quote wrong then or maybe out of context?





fdb said:


> Daylami (South of the Caspian Sea), not Kurdish. But we have enough problems already with Persian and Arab nationalists without getting the Kurds involved as well.


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## NorwegianNYC

berndf said:


> Why then did the Turks who conquered Persia assimilate into the Persian culture and language while the Turks who conquered Anatolia didn't? Why do Iranians today speak Farsi and not Turkish and why do the modern Turks speak Turkish and not Greek?


Numbers. When the Turks moved into Greek-speaking Anatolia, they not only had sufficient numbers to sustain their own language, but the Greek-speakers grew too few to resist over time. In the more densely populated Persia, the Turks never reached the critical mass to trigger a language change.


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## fdb

berndf said:


> Is this quote wrong then or maybe out of context?



It is correct as far as Samanids and Ghaznavids are concerned, but wrong about the Buyids.


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## berndf

NorwegianNYC said:


> Numbers. When the Turks moved into Greek-speaking Anatolia, they not only had sufficient numbers to sustain their own language, but the Greek-speakers grew too few to resist over time. In the more densely populated Persia, the Turks never reached the critical mass to trigger a language change.


Is that something you guess or do you have evidence for that? From the administrative structures in the Roman and Byzantine periods, Anatolia was very densely populated. As far as I know, we don't know too much about the Seljuq/Rum-period in Anatolia. Do you have any sources from where we could infer that the population significantly declined in that period? I would be most interested.


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## berndf

fdb said:


> It is correct as far as Samanids and Ghaznavids are concerned, but wrong about the Buyids.


Thank you.


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## NorwegianNYC

> Is that something you guess or do you have evidence for that? From the  administrative structures in the Roman and Byzantine periods, Anatolia  was very densely populated. As far as I know, we don't know too much  about the Seljuq/Rum-period in Anatolia. Do you have any sources from  where we could infer that the population significantly declined in that  period? I would be most interested.


Unfortunately, I cannot give all the sources (you will find them online), but I will give you a wrap-up of the theories concerning this:
  Josiah Russell (Uni of New Mexico) estimates the Anatolian population to be 12 million in late Roman times. There was a heavy Greek presence in the West, around the Sea of Marmara and in the Pontic regions to the North, but the rest of Anatolia was a patchwork of other linguistic groups, such as Armenian, Kurdish, Cilician, Assyrian, Aramaic, Persian, Arabic and perhaps remnants of Anatolian speakers. The Byzantine practice of population transfers throughout the empire to prevent certain groups from becoming too powerful, and resettling their areas with Greek-speakers, inadvertently led to a weakening of the nationalities and the linguistic hold on an area.
  Historian Speros Vryonis of UCLA claims that these population transfers (especially of the numerically strong Armenians) weakened the hold on Eastern, Southern and Central Anatolia – the areas where the Turks entered first – because the Greek identity in these areas was very thin. These were also the areas most affected by the ongoing wars, and was probably more scarcely populated outside the cities.

  When the Turks moved in, they were a minority (albeit a consolidated minority), but in relative relation to the scattered communities of other nationalities, they must have been dominant. Greek and Armenian continued to be dominant languages in parts of Anatolia until the 1920s


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## WadiH

While I sympathize somewhat with the "linguistic compatibility" theory, which indeed was cited at least speculatively by many scholars (none of them linguists as far as I can recall), I don't think it is enough to explain why some regions became Arabic-speaking and others did not.  It seems plausible when looking at a language like Syriac or Hebrew, where even lay people can discern the relationship between the languages, but the theory runs into a major weakness in Egypt and North Africa.  It's all fine and dandy for modern-day linguists to group these ancient languages as part of a large "Afro-Asiatic" family, but any relationship between Coptic or Berber and Arabic is far too obscure for anyone other than a specialist linguist to deduce.  For all practical purposes, the difference between these languages and Arabic is so great that I can't see how knowing Coptic/Berber would make it any more likely for a person to pick up Arabic than knowing Persian or Turkish.

The political explanation (that Arabs only ruled Persia until the 10th century at the latest) is also attractive, but again the same can easily be said about Egypt and North Africa, where all post-Fatimid dynasties were non-Arab.  And these regions gained their de-facto independence from Baghdad even earlier than Persia.  I don't buy the idea that Arabic did not take root in Andalusia -- I think there's every indication that Andalusia would be as much an "Arab" country today as the neighboring North African countries were it not for the Reconquista.

I also have to disagree strongly with Abu Rashid.  I don't think sectarianism or Shi'ism had anything to do with Persia not becoming an Arabic-speaking country.  Most of that region was and still is Sunni (think of Kurdistan, eastern Iran, Afghanistan, and the former Soviet Republics, including the Persian-speaking Sunni nation of Tajikstan), yet they do not speak Arabic either.  As the other posters have noted, Iran only adopted Shi'ism en masse under the Safavids.  Before that, Shi'ism was widespread in Iran but the majority were still Sunnis.  The revival of Persian culture was sponsored by Sunni dynasties such as the Samanids and the Tahirids.  The symbol of Persian literary resurgence, the _Shahnameh_ of Firdawsi was sponsored by the Sunni Samanids.  While the Buyids were indeed fanatical Shi'ites and much of what we now think of as Twelver Shi'ism took shape under their patronage, there is no evidence that this was based on Persian nationalism.  Their ancestors had originally converted directly from Zoroastrianism to Zaydi Shi'ism at the hands of a Zaydi (Arab) leader.  There were also many Arab Shi'ite dynasties in that era, including the Hamdanids of northern Syria who were fiercely proud of their Arabian heritage and were contemporaries of the Buyids. In any case, it would appear that neo-Persian dynasties such as the Samanids simply promoted Persian as a language of state and government to reflect the fact that most of their subjects still spoke Persian.  I haven't come across any evidence that they were responsible for ordinary folk adopting Persian.  Witness the major Sunni scholar Al-Ghazali, a scholar of Persian heritage who wrote mostly in Arabic but tellingly wrote such books as Kiimyaa-i-Saadet (_The Alchemy of Happiness_), which was clearly intended to be read by lay folk, in Persian and not Arabic.  The staunchly Sunni Seljuks (who rescued Sunnism from the Buyids) also apparently used Persian heavily in their court as their empire was initially largely composed of Persia.  The most plausible reason is that Persian speakers were just far too numerous and eventually overwhelmed any government that ruled over that area.

The best explanation for North Africa and Egypt adopting Arabic that I can think of is the following:
1) these countries were sparsely populated and largely composed of deserts apart from narrow coastal strips, in contrast with Persia and central Asia, which were not only more populous but also more diverse geographically, linguistically and ethnically,
2) these countries lacked a history of independent nationhood and had been provinces in larger empires for a long time (Egypt's pharonic kingdoms were much too far in the past at that point),
3) much like Syria and Iraq, the waves of immigrant Arabian tribes did not cease with the initial conquests but instead continued for many centuries (though they eventually ceased, unlike Iraq and Syria, which continued to receive Arabian tribes up to the 20th century).  This factor is of course tied to factor number 1.
4) Egypt in particular was intimately connected to the Arabic heartland of Syria and western Arabia and was part of the same cultural sphere, unlike the area east of Iraq.


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## fdb

This is a very well thought out answer to what remains a difficult question.


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## berndf

Wadi Hanifa said:


> The political explanation (that Arabs only ruled Persia until the 10th century at the latest) is also attractive, but again the same can easily be said about Egypt and North Africa, where all post-Fatimid dynasties were non-Arab.


I was mainly concerned with earlier periods, until and not after the Fatimids. The degree of Arabization of Egypt reached a practically irreversible level quite early. Even the Coptic Christians adopted Arabic as the official language of their church (except for liturgical purposes) already in the 11th century, if I remember correctly.



Wadi Hanifa said:


> The most plausible reason is that Persian speakers were just far too numerous and eventually overwhelmed any government that ruled over that area.


Not only eventually. The very first viziers of the Abbasid dynasty were Persians.



Wadi Hanifa said:


> 4) Egypt in particular was intimately connected to the Arabic heartland of Syria and western Arabia and was part of the same cultural sphere, unlike the area east of Iraq.


I agree.


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## NorwegianNYC

A contributing factor was probably that most Middle Eastern and North African peoples already spoke a Semitic (Afro-Asiatic) language that was structurally similar to Arabic, whereas the Turks, Persians and people of the Balkans spoke unrelated languages. A similar story is seen in the Slavic migrations of the early Middle Ages. The Magyar invasions did not yield significant linguistic change because the language was too different. The southern Slavs on the other hand prevailed because Slavic was after all more akin to e.g. Dalmatian than Magyar in terms of structure and descent.


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## berndf

NorwegianNYC said:


> A contributing factor was probably that most Middle Eastern and North African peoples already spoke a Semitic (Afro-Asiatic) language...


I don't think there was a significant Semitic speaking population in North Africa. There was a Jewish community and maybe "leftovers" of the Punic empire, but not a significant part of the population. And, as Wadi Hanifa pointed out, the relationship between Semitic and other Afro-Asiatic languages is much too distant to have played any role. Coptic and Arabic are maybe as close as Norwegian and Romani ćhib (the Gypsy language).


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## NorwegianNYC

berndf said:


> I don't think there was a significant Semitic speaking population in North Africa. There was a Jewish community and maybe "leftovers" of the Punic empire, but not a significant part of the population. And, as Wadi Hanifa pointed out, the relationship between Semitic and other Afro-Asiatic languages is much too distant to have played any role. Coptic and Arabic are maybe as close as Norwegian and Romani ćhib (the Gypsy language).


I believe the cities were mostly Greek and Latin speaking, whereas the hinterland was Punic or Punic-descent speaking in some places and Berber in other. Punic was definitely a Central Semitic language, and would easily be absorbed by Arabic. In the Levant, Aramaic was the lingua franca, and although Coptic and Semitic are only distant relatives, the more cosmopolitan Egypt, must have been a melting pot for various cultures - Semitic cultures in particular.
Edward Lipinski (ling.)(Uni of Leuven, Belgium) says: _Punic remained in use [in Carthage] for considerably longer than Phoenician did in Phoenicia itself, arguably surviving into Augustine's time. It even survived the Arabic conquest of North Africa, as the geographer al-Bakri describes a people speaking a language not Berber, Latin or Coptic in the city of Sirte in northern Libya, a region where spoken Punic survived well past written use. It is likely that Arabization of the Punics was facilitated by their language belonging to the same group, thus having many grammatical and lexical similarities_


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## berndf

If there were some Punic-speaking patches here and there can hardly be relevant for this discussion. In Egypt and Cyrenaica, the biggest part of North-Africa in terms of population, Punic never played any role. Sirte is in Tripolitania, old Punic territory.


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## NorwegianNYC

Berndf - in that case we have to agree to limit the scope! North Africa - which is mentioned several times in this thread - does indeed include Tripolitania and modern-day Tunisia and Algeria as well. Those locations are absolutely relevant for a discussion on the spread of Arabic in North Africa.


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## berndf

NorwegianNYC said:


> Berndf - in that case we have to agree to limit the scope! North Africa - which is mentioned several times in this thread - does indeed include Tripolitania and modern-day Tunisia and Algeria as well. Those locations are absolutely relevant for a discussion on the spread of Arabic in North Africa.


Of course, but just because within the *smaller *part of North-Africa there were *patches *of Punic left you can't argue that the whole of North-Africa changed to Arabic because they already spoke Semitic. That is just absurd.


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## NorwegianNYC

berndf said:


> Of course, but just because within the *smaller *part of North-Africa there were *patches *of Punic left you can't argue that the whole of North-Africa changed to Arabic because they already spoke Semitic. That is just absurd.


Which I do not! I cannot see where I am "arguing" such in my posts! I am simply saying that (and the strongest expression I use is "contributing factor") in the Levant and North Africa, the already existing Semitic languages facilitated the takeover of Arabic. We have to admit that we do not know a whole lot about the linguistic situation in North Africa in the Early Middle Ages (especially not in the countryside) other than Berber, Latin, Coptic, Greek and Punic were spoken to some extent.


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## berndf

NorwegianNYC said:


> Which I do not! I cannot see where I am "arguing" such in my posts! I am simply saying that (and the strongest expression I use is "contributing factor") in the Levant and North Africa, the already existing Semitic languages facilitated the takeover of Arabic. We have to admit that we do not know a whole lot about the linguistic situation in North Africa in the Early Middle Ages (especially not in the countryside) other than Berber, Latin, Coptic, Greek and Punic were spoken to some extent.


Ok, but this statement now is so lukewarm it says almost nothing unless we find some evidence for a Semitic-speaking population of substantial size.


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## WadiH

berndf said:


> Ok, but this statement now is so lukewarm it says almost nothing unless we find some evidence for a Semitic-speaking population of substantial size.



Most "language replacements" in history occurred between languages that are unrelated anyway (e.g. Spanish in Mexico, Bolivia or Paraguay, where most people are of native stock), so even if it was a factor, I think its effect would have been at best marginal.


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## WadiH

berndf said:


> I was mainly concerned with earlier periods, until and not after the Fatimids. The degree of Arabization of Egypt reached a practically irreversible level quite early. Even the Coptic Christians adopted Arabic as the official language of their church (except for liturgical purposes) already in the 11th century, if I remember correctly.




Well, the independent Persian dynasties began to appear around the time of the Fatimids.  Egypt had already become de facto independent before that (late 9th century to be precise) under the Tulunids, who were of Turkic descent, and Egypt would never be administered from Baghdad again.




> Not only eventually. The very first viziers of the Abbasid dynasty were Persians.
> 
> I agree.



These were Arabic-speaking viziers of Persian or at least Iranian ancestry.  I'm not sure the Barmakids (who I assume you have in mind) even spoke any Persian as they had been settled in Iraq for several generations. The language of state was very much Arabic at that time and actually remained so even under the Buyids.


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## Abu Rashid

berndf said:


> Since Fatimid caliphate comprised a substantial part of the Muslim world, it is relevant.



Only if I had claimed "All who adopted shi'ism were doomed to abandon Arabic", which I clearly did not. There is a very big difference between stating that the sectarianism of the Persians was instrumental in their abandonment of Arabic and revival of Persian, and stating that all who are sectarian must abandon Arabic and revive their pre-Islamic languages.



berndf said:


> By definition before the schism, as it was triggered by an event that ended this period (the assassination of Ali).



My point was that each of these ages merged straight into the next (with the exception of the Ottoman, which was linked via the Mamluk period), and that the vast overwhelming bulk of the Muslim world were either directly ruled under this Caliphate, or by a state which gave allegiance to it. The unity of the Islamic world is unrivalled throughout history. No other super-state existed for so long and with such unity over such a vast area of land before or since. That is my view (although note that I never made it part of this discussion, you did). No it wasn't perfectly united, as such a concept is not realistic, but considering its size and longevity, it was remarkably united.



berndf said:


> That I wouldn't call golden era any more.



In certain areas (most notably scientific discoveries) it was of course on the waning side, but in others it was still part of the golden era, at least up until the time of Suletyman al-Kanuni. The removal of the Byzantine obstacle to the eastern entrance into Europe epitomised by the crown jewel of Christendom, Constantinople, becoming the capital of the Caliphate, huge advances in military technology and many others place it firmly within the golden era. 



berndf said:


> You argument rests the equation Shia = Persian, Sunni = Arabic.




No it doesn't. It rests on the idea that Shi'a sectarianism was used specifically by Persians, mostly in Iran as a defining factor for their separation from the mainstream Arabic speaking Sunni Muslims. Nowhere did I ever state that any such divide occurred whereby all who were Shi'a adopted Persian language, and all who were Sunni adopted Arabic. That might've been what you felt was the logical conclusion of my statements, but it was not what I meant, nor what I stated at all.




berndf said:


> If you withdraw your argument than it is off topic. What then?



My argument is what it is... if you wish to discuss it for what it is, feel free. But do not apply your own conclusions to it, and suggest I must defend your development of my argument.


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## berndf

Abu Rashid said:


> No it doesn't. It rests on the idea that Shi'a sectarianism was used specifically by Persians, mostly in Iran as a defining factor for their separation from the mainstream Arabic speaking Sunni Muslims.


And that's wrong as other people in this thread explained.


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## Abu Rashid

berndf said:


> And that's wrong as other people in this thread explained.



All that was explained was that not all Persians were Shi'a and that some Shi'a still speak Arabic.

I don't disagree with those points, as I never claimed all Shi'a were Persian, nor that a Shi'a can't speak Arabic.

Anyway I feel this line of discussion is being lost to absolutism, which is a shame, so I'm not going to carry it any further, just wanted to clarify my position.


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## NorwegianNYC

Wadi Hanifa said:


> Most "language replacements" in history occurred between languages that are unrelated anyway (e.g. Spanish in Mexico, Bolivia or Paraguay, where most people are of native stock), so even if it was a factor, I think its effect would have been at best marginal.


Actually - Spanish came to be the language of the New World as a result of the catastrophic population loss amongst the indigenous peoples, leaving Spanish speakers the majority. In areas less depopulated, the indigenous languages thrived, and indeed thrives until today in Quechua, Aymara and Guarani in South America, and Nahuatl in Mexico.

When it comes to the Arabization of North Africa, remnants of semitic speakers in the area surely facilitated the initial wave of language conversion, subsequently reinforced by the resettling of the Banu Halim and Banu Salaym tribes in the 1040s.


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## fdb

I am not sure whether "catastrophic population loss" is really a viable hypothesis in any part of Latin America, but it certainly does not explain the replacement of indigenous languages by Arabic. Egypt has always been a very densely populated country. Arab/Bedouin migration into Egypt is a drop in the ocean.


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## NorwegianNYC

fdb said:


> I am not sure whether "catastrophic population loss" is really a viable hypothesis in any part of Latin America


From an estimated 30 million indigenous people in the Americas in 1492, to 7 million in 1650, mostly through diseases, is not only what ruined these civilization, it is also what paved the way for the Spanish and Portuguese linguistic take-over. (Source: La catastrophe démographique", L'Histoire n°322)


> [It] certainly does not explain the replacement of indigenous languages by Arabic.


No - not diseases. Definitely not. There is no single explanation to the spread of Arabic. In this thread, I have focused on North Africa and Turkey. In modern-day Libya, Tunisia and Algeria, a combination of remnants of Punic speakers and forced resettlement of tribes from the Arabic Peninsula (such as Bani Halim and Bani Salaym) to these areas, probably made Arabic the majority language. Perhaps Arabic speakers initially did not constitute a majority of the population, but the Arabic speaking _bloc_ was the biggest single language.


> Egypt has always been a very densely populated country. Arab/Bedouin migration into Egypt is a drop in the ocean.


Absolutely, but then again - it took a lot longer for Arabic to weed out Coptic in Egypt. Coptic went into decline when it (and Koine Greek) was no longer used for administrative purposes (this started in the reign of Abd al-Malik), but it took hundreds of years. Perhaps for as long as 400 years, Egypt was essentially bilingual, but due to Islamization, Arabic won out. Also - Egypt was not totally unfamiliar with Arabic. Prior to the conquest there were Arabic speaking tribes living in Sinai and the Eastern Delta.


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## berndf

NorwegianNYC said:


> Perhaps for as long as 400 years


I am a bit surprised that you consider that a long time. How long do you think it took Arabic to "wipe out" Berber? Until now 1400 years. A process that has still not been completed.


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## fdb

In North Africa, the Berbers became Muslims, probably quite early, but retained their own language, like the Persians and the speakers of South Arabian languages, until the present. 

In Egypt, both Muslims and Christians all adopted Arabic. 

In Iraq, the Christians in the cities adopted Arabic, but those in small towns and villages have largely retained Aramaic even today.

 In Transoxania, the Bactrians, Sogdians and Choresmians lost their own languages at some time after the Muslim conquest, but they adopted not Arabic, but Persian, and later Turkish (and yes, they were overwhelmingly Sunni Muslims).

 Is it not clear that one shoe does not fit all sizes?


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## NorwegianNYC

berndf said:


> I am a bit surprised that you consider that a long time. How long do you think it took Arabic to "wipe out" Berber? Until now 1400 years. A process that has still not been completed.


OK, Berndf - it was poorly phrased. Very many, if not most, events in World history comes down to the two factors geography and topography. The Berber languages are well and thriving because they are spoken in the outskirts of the Arabic speaking world - where few Arabic speakers settled. Certain Berber languages are indeed lost or have become heavily Arabized, probably because they over time became minority languages in their own communities, which again is probably because these communities were found in more desirable location for invaders. Look at Northern Tunisia. It has over time experienced a number of radical language replacements: Berber, Punic, Greek, Latin, Vandalic, Arabic. Today there are only small pockets of Berber-speakers left in Libya/Tunisia/Algeria, and most of them are spoken in the interior - in a terrain that was less inviting to foreigners.
When I used Native American languages as an example, it is because you see the same pattern. Quechua, Aymara and Guarani are all spoken in areas where the Spanish were never numerous and where the native languages remained majority languages.

In the more sedentary and urbanized Egypt, Arabization moved at a very quick pace. You are right - 400 years is not a long time (however, Coptic lingered until the 18th Century in the South). There can be no doubt other factors (such as Islamization and taxes) played a significant role. We know that the decline of the Coptic Church was largely for financial reasons, since the merchant class abandoned the church and converted to Islam to avoid taxation. There must have been some uncertain years for Arabic in Egypt, but once it reached a critical mass, the process probably sped up, and the days of Coptic was numbered.

This processes tend to happen to happen faster in an more densely populated area than a more scarcely populated area. Which is why - my opinion - Berber is still alive, well and kicking


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## Anibal56

Wait. Punic had no importance in Algeria west of Hippone (modernday Annaba). In 1830, at the arrival of France , Berbers (i.e speakers of the Berber language known also as Amazigh)  represented 40 % of the population. Arabized and Arab people represented the rest , divided in between the semi-nomadic ones (sparsely populated) and urban people (inhabitants of the cities and their adjacent sendetary villages). Algerian Highlands , peopled by sedentary Berber people ,  were always more populeous than the plains were nomadic Arabic speaking clans had their lives hence why their high %. The exact same landscape existed in Morocco. After the French colonization , there was a big demographic boom , with sedentarization and all the likes. The percentage for Berber speakers decreased , including via the urbanization of some Berbers  who migrated to their adjacent cities ,  to the  vague percentage of  20-25% nowadays.

The history of Tunisia is different , the history of Punic in Tunisian coasts is a mystery for me. I have mixed feeling but I also feel like Punic  have survived untill the Arab invasion , as an Arab scholar once mentioned a language which was no Latin , Berber or Hebrew spoken West of Tripolitania , this must have been Punic ?. The reason why Berbers are present in Libya , much more than in Tunisia , is because most of them (in Tripolitania mainly) are Ibadis , not Sunni. Their religion derive from Berber *Kharijites*  which were rebels to the Arab power back in that time , their language is very linked to their religion. It is also because Libya may have been arabized later than Tunisian coasts , untill the 11th century arrival of Bedouin Banu Sulaym tribe. We also know Tunisia has relatively more urban spaces than the rest of the Magheb at the end of antiquity , and the first vague of arabization in the Maghreb was essentially urban.

Indeed we separate two period of arabization in the Maghreb , one which stands after the 7 century and which is mostly urban. A second with the arrival of the Banu Hilall and the likes which stands after the 10 century and was rural. In between these two periods and untill the beginning of the 20th century for Morocco &  Algeria , Arabic and Berber are going to live side by side. Arabic has enriched Tamazight of a certain number of words , a vocabulary which differs in percentage from dialects to dialects but probably similar to how Norman French influenced English vocabulary. 
On the other hand , especially in the case of the traditional Maghreb region (Tunisia , Algeria and Morocco) even if in Tunisia , urban dialect seems to have envolved with much less Berber influence as it still remains a stronger 'Oriental' accent , Tamazight has phonetically and grammatically influenced  the Arabic dialects spoken from the Koines (standard mixed modern forms) to the distinct Urban and Bedouin variants of the old times.


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## Ben Jamin

berndf said:


> I very much doubt this is the reason. Arabs simply didn't rule Persia long enough to establish their language: little more than 100 year. The way political power and cultural influence was distributed in the Abbasid caliphate, you could seriously question whether Persia was under Arabic rule or Arabia under Persian rule. And with the establishment of the Buyid Emirates in 934-945, Arab rule over anything east of the Shatt-Al-`Arab was gone for good.


Arabic did not manage to root out Berber languages in Algeria and Morocco, even after 1000 years. So those languages are not so similar that they would be easily merged with Arabic. The Aramaic language spoken in Mesopotamia and Great Syria was an easy prey, however.


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## Treaty

In the case of Persia there are two important things:
1- Saffarid (860-1000) who were the first post-Islamic Persian dynasty actively supported the use of Persian. It seems they even banned using Arabic. Their successors (Samanid) were even greater supporters.
2- Among early Islamic conquests, Iran was the most populous (I think) with more distribution of population and also more difficult landscape (basically mountains, this also applies to Iraqi Kurdistan). Zagros mountains acted a cultural barrier. While, north African coast line, Mesopotamia and Levant were easily accessible.


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## Wolverine9

^ Egypt's current population is a little greater than that of Iran's, and the two countries were probably comparably populated at the time of the Islamic conquests.  So that raises the question.  Why did Iran largely preserve its language and culture but not Egypt? 

 I don't know if this has been mentioned already, but I think it had to do with Egypt and many other regions of the Middle East and North Africa being culturally weakened due to centuries of foreign rule.  Basically, from the time of Alexander to the Islamic conquests, those regions were under Hellenistic and Roman influence.  So when the Arabs came, these areas were more susceptible to cultural/linguistic displacement in favor of Arabic.  Conversely, Iran was largely immune from foreign rule except for a brief period after the Greek conquests.  

It should be noted, though, that the Arabization process in Egypt was slower as compared to Mesopotamia and the Levant, perhaps due to the similarities between Arabic and Aramaic.  Berber was probably able to resist the advances of Arabic because it was far from the center of Arabic culture and the tribal organization of the Berber people likely served as a natural barrier of sorts.


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## Treaty

My guess about population was due to two disasters in Iran (in 1200s and 1300s as a result of Mongolian and Timur invasion) which Egyptian didn't suffer. Both along with black death claimed more than half of the population. However, I don't have any firm historical demography for that time.

My main point is the geographic barriers (like Zagros in Iran and Taurus in Turkey) and the distribution of population. I think they were more effective than any other factors. 

Zagros mountains have been such a barrier for the earliest civilisations. It effectively prevented Mesopotamian from attacking central Iran while preventing Iranian people to flood into Mesopotamia. It must have also decreased the amount of trade and cultural connection between its sides, allowing both to preserve and dwell their own cultures and languages. While there is no such barriers between Arab speaking countries. Actually, if you consider the natural map, Arab speaking countries are those with any natural barrier (i.e. sea, high mountains, sahara) between them and Arabia. A barrier not only reduces cultural exchange but also enables people on the other side to better preserve and defend themselves. 

Considering the population distribution, the Egyptian civilisation was linear, aligned along the Nile. Other north African cities were also aligned the Mediterranean coast. It means an army or trade route could have covered all the region without the need to be divided. In contrast, Iran has more patterns of distribution (linear along rivers, along mountain beds, within plains, in the mountains, along coast). In fact, Persian language itself had problems penetrating into some regions of Iran, and when successful, it is sometimes divided between mutually unrecognisable dialects.


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## Wolverine9

That's true about the geography of Iran vis a vis the Arab countries.  But how would you explain Arabic not penetrating the Kurdish regions of northern Iraq?  I don't think there is any such natural barrier separating northern and southern Iraq.


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## Treaty

Wolverine9 said:


> That's true about the geography of Iran vis a vis the Arab countries.  But how would you explain Arabic not penetrating the Kurdish regions of northern Iraq?  I don't think there is any such natural barrier separating northern and southern Iraq.



I'm not sure about the exact distribution and history of Kurds in modern Iraq, however, it seems that their main population live on (or very close to) the extension Zagros mountains in Iraq. 
In addition, Iraqi Kurds are mainly Kurmanji (like Kurds in neighbour provinces of Iran and Turkey) that suggests they had cultural support from those regions. You can find a similar pattern in Khuzestan in southwest Iran. While being a flat land exposed to Mesopotamia, it had a Luri-Persian support from Zagros and preserved a rich set of Persian-Luri dialects. 
Probably, up to a certain distance from the mountain range the lifestyle (farming/husbandry/trade) is more similar to the mountain's than to the flat plain's.


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## Anibal56

The arab invasion of the Maghreb was not that easy. It took several years to the Ummeyade dynasty to defeat the Berber revolt deriged first by Kusaila and then the Queen Kahina , this later became a real legend in her peoples mind and even the Arab scholars mentionned her several times in their compilations.  The mountain ranges  numerous in the western region helped the conservation of the native language , probably similar to Iranian highlands indeed. For the Levant , the switch from Arabic to Aramaic was quick exactly how Aramaic wiped out pre-existing Semitic idioms in the region before but Islamization took a much longer time , strong christian communities remained with their lithurgical languages being the memmory of this preislamic past . In Egypt coptic was still spoken untill the Mamemeluk period , this can give an idea.


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## DenisBiH

Wolverine9 said:


> I don't know if this has been mentioned already, but I think it had to do with Egypt and many other regions of the Middle East and North Africa being culturally weakened due to centuries of foreign rule.  Basically, from the time of Alexander to the Islamic conquests, those regions were under Hellenistic and Roman influence.  So when the Arabs came, these areas were more susceptible to cultural/linguistic displacement in favor of Arabic.  Conversely, Iran was largely immune from foreign rule except for a brief period after the Greek conquests.



Do you know if there is any study about such cultural weakening due to prior conquests contributing to easier linguistic assimilation? I had once speculated that such a thing may have contributed to easier Slavicization of native inhabitants of Dalmatia/Illyria, but I had no study to back it up with.


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## Wolverine9

^ I haven't searched for any studies.  It was just my attempt to explain why Arabic spread to certain places and not others.  It could be true for the Slavicization as well.


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