Talk:Maghrebi Arabs

Proposed move

This article's scope has been exceptionally hazy and ill-defined for the past few years or so. It started out as an article on the Arab diaspora in Africa (including in sub-Saharan and Sahel countries like Tanzania, Kenya, Chad, Mali, etc) then the title was changed to "North African Arabs" for some reason utterly lost on me (North African Arabs and Arabs in Africa at large are most certainly not the same thing), and now the article seems to focus almost exclusively on Arabs in the Maghreb region, not even North Africa at large. This has led to content about Egyptians and Arabs in the Sudan being removed, as those countries are not part of the Maghreb despite being considered parts of the northern subcontinent.

Due to this trend towards a narrower and narrower focus at the expense of coverage, I'm going to propose we move this article to Arab diaspora in Africa, similar to British diaspora in Africa and return its scope to what it was originally tended to be.

Furthermore, this article is more or less a stub. Expanding its coverage will allow new content to be incorporated and help populate the page for our readership.

Thanks, --Katangais (talk) 16:48, 12 March 2017 (UTC)

"Shasu" section

What does this have to do with the subject? They were neither ethnic Arabs or Arabic speaking, so they should be removed. FunkMonk (talk) 14:16, 6 July 2017 (UTC)

This article represents reliable sources incorrectly and needs more detailed information

Even though this article seems to be supported by some sources, it is full of statements that are not correctly rendered. For example, this sentence seems to me absolutely inaccurate: "The descendants of the original Arab settlers who continue to speak Arabic as a first language currently form the single largest population group in North Africa." This statement totally contradicts the article on Arab Berbers and its sources, and confuses speaking regional forms of Arabic in the Maghreb as a native language with using Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) as a language for official statements, written forms of communication or the teaching of MSA in schools and universities. The linguistic reality of the Maghreb and most other Arabic speaking countries has been described by sociolinguists as diglossia and must be described as such. That most people in these countries consider themselves as North Africans, Arabs, Berbers, Moroccans, Algerians etc. should also be discussed in detail and supported by reliable sources. - IMO, the fact that it has been under discussion for deletion and obviously been drastically changed without success means that it either needs thorough re-editing or deletion and possibly a new start. Munfarid1 (talk) 23:27, 14 January 2022 (UTC)

January 2023

The cited source that is supposed to support this statement has been misrepresented. All it says is: "Arabs are the largest single ethnic group in the Middle East and North Africa, numbering around 325 million people living in 22 countries that make up the League of Arab States... Arab ethnicity is difficult to define, and it is generally accepted that it is primarily based on speaking the Arabic language.". M.Bitton (talk) 13:37, 12 January 2023 (UTC)

Ethnic group Infobox

Maghrebi Arabs

العرب المغاربة
Arabs at a cafe, Algiers, Algeria
Total population
tbd
Languages
Maghrebi Arabic
Religion
Sunni Islam
Related ethnic groups
Arabs, Berbers

This article should have an ethnic group infobox like the one I made here. The problem is that it does not have numbers for the population as I don't know it and can't find a source estimating a number. If someone can help. it would be appreciated Mayouhm (talk) 12:07, 14 January 2025 (UTC)

The article is fine without an infobox (which is optional and serves no real purpose). M.Bitton (talk) 14:01, 14 January 2025 (UTC)

Oh okay. Thanks. I thought it was preferred to have one for ethnic groups Mayouhm (talk) 15:09, 14 January 2025 (UTC)

Where Maghrebi Arabs trace their ancestry from

@Yaghmosus You know you're supposed to establish consensus before making a contentious change instead of edit warring? I would recommend self-reverting.

What applies to North African Arabs as a collective would apply to Maghrebi Arabs (a subset of North African Arabs) too. It's well within the scope of the article. A lot of the sources used in this article do not specify "Maghrebi Arabs" specifically and just say "Arabs" but those too would be within the scope of the article since this deals with Arabs in the Maghreb. How do you disagree with the claim that Maghrebi Arabs believe their ancestry come from the Arabian Peninsula? Especially, when the contents of the article discuss the migration of Arab tribes into North Africa in great length Mayouhm (talk) 09:34, 20 April 2026 (UTC)

Starting with the irrelevant part of "why i think maghrebi arabs dont claim ancestry from the arabian peninsula" it's because as someone who is categorically a "Maghrebi Arab" i don't and non of my relatives and people that i know do, infact i've only met a couple that do and that's only because they are Chaanbis. Also the article isnt about Arabs that migrated to the Maghreb it's about People in the Maghreb whose ethnic identity is Arab which is entirely different from people whose origin is Arab. Also this entire notion is entirely contradicted by almost every historiographical or genetic analysis on the region which indefinitely conclude that Maghrebi Arabs (the majority population of the Maghreb that this article is trying to describe) aren't descended and have no traceable origins to Arabia or Arabian tribes, Infact i'll probably add a genetics section to this article for that purpose.

and for the part that matters, not only is the source Primary as it doesn't have a single citation that corroborates it's claim, and is probably just an assumption made by a extremely generalized article. It goes significantly beyond the scope of the article, as Egypt has as much population as the whole Maghreb. Yaghmosus (talk) 13:51, 20 April 2026 (UTC)

@Yaghmosus The article is about Arabs from the Maghreb a subset of North African Arabs and Arabs as a whole. Most of the article (appropriately) discusses Arab migration to the Maghreb as it was. In the literature, Maghrebi Arabs are typically rerred to as just Arabs. The claim that they're origin is entirely different to Arabs besides being unsourced is wholly irrelevant to what they themselves believe.

The source is nor primary either. It's an encyclopedia and thus a tertiary source. Plenty of secondary and tertiary sources do not directly cite other sources. In Wikipedia, we can cite both secondary and tertiary sources Mayouhm (talk) 14:08, 20 April 2026 (UTC)

i'll agree to readding that statement as long as it's followed by a statement corroborating that this notion is largely false basically saying "they trace their ancestry to arab tribes, even though this notion is contradicted by genetic data" and citations to support.

Either this or the entire scope of the article needs to be changed to focus entirely on arabs who are actually of tribal arab origin which probably wont happen. Yaghmosus (talk) 14:16, 20 April 2026 (UTC)

@Yaghmosus That would be unnecessary because when it comes to ethnic groups the myth of origin is more relevant than the reality of it. If you want to add a genetics section feel free to, even though I personally don't think its that appropriate to have one for ethnic group articles Mayouhm (talk) 14:21, 20 April 2026 (UTC)

i think i would be fine with you re adding it to another part of the page, instead of the main paragraph, as it's really a point of contention, like there's only even one source that i can find that claims this, most sources dont really discuss what the people themselves think, and mostly talk about origins in the genetic sense. Yaghmosus (talk) 21:25, 21 April 2026 (UTC)

Where? Mayouhm (talk) 19:54, 22 April 2026 (UTC)

culture section Yaghmosus (talk) 20:48, 22 April 2026 (UTC)

Is this better? Mayouhm (talk) 23:08, 22 April 2026 (UTC)

Significantly yes, thanks Yaghmosus (talk) 08:38, 23 April 2026 (UTC)