THE PLACE OF THE ARABS I N HISTORY

           Just as the ancient world from abo-
out 600 B.C. , was dominated be the Gree-
ks and the Romans , and the modern wor-
ld has been dominated by the western eu-ropean and their offshoots in the new wo-rld , so the middle ages were dominated
by the Arabs.
         
           The place of the Arabs in history by
the influence they have exercised over its
course may be assessed , in reference to
three separate criteria:
           First , the Arabs have made part of
the map of the world indelibly their own by permanently Arabizing most of the mi-
ddle east and the whole of north Africa.In
these regions a total of some sixty millio-
ns people speak Arabic today and call themselves Arab in one sense or another.
           Secondly , the Arabs spread the Mu
slems religion far beyond the frontiers of
the Arab world. By conquest (when their empire stretched from Spain to China and
was twice as large as the Romans Empire
had ever been) or through trade and cultu-
ral expansion they carried the Faithamatbaqed by prophet Mohammed into the heart
of Asia down into its southeastern tip of
Malaya and across the sea into the island
s of the east Indiies . The numbers of Mu-
slems in the world about one billion great
monotheistic community spread through-
out the eastern hemisphere and still living
in the main a life largely determined by th
e social legislation laid down in the koran
   
           Although sex-seventh of this world
society are not Arabs nor Arabic speaking
, yet it is the product of Arab inspiration and enterprise -contribution to history. no
less important than the creation of the s-
mallers but more compact and homogen-
eous Arab world.
      
          Thirdly the Arabs at the peak of their
creative efforts, in Damascus and Bagda-
d , in Toledo and Cordova. led the world in
civilization and whether by what they orig-inated themselves or what they learned and transmitted from anceint Greece Per-
sia and India played a vital role in the con-
tinuity of human progress it was they wh-
o gave light to the Mediterranean world th
e channel -bed of the main stream of civi-
lazation between the great dawn illumina-
tion of classical antiquities and the noon-
tide blaze of the Renaissance.

By Mohammad matbaq.