User talk:Patrick0Maran

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Arabian Peninsula/ Arabistan revert

The article links to disambiguation pages for Arabia and Arabistan. Standard geography handbooks instruct readers to 'see Arabian Peninsula' for explanations and descriptions of those terms.

The Romans, Greeks, and Persians simply added the suffix '-ia', '-ya', or 'stan' to form nouns for the land of the Arabs. So far as the Arabs and Ottomans were concerned, all of the regions where the Arabs lived were the land of the Arabs - bilad al-Arab (Arabia or Arabistan). All of the Arab lands, such as Arabia Petraea, Arabia Felix, and Arabia Deserta were located on the same tectonic plate - the Arabian Plate. The modern borders and regional distinctions were established after WWI on the basis of western political considerations.

Many standard reference books on geography explain these facts. For example, the entry on page 61 of the Merriam-Webster's Geographical Dictionary for the Arabian Peninsula indicates Arabia or Arabistan are synonyms for the peninsula, and that in early times the peninsula was divided into Arabia Petraea, Arabia Felix, and Arabia Deserta. The same entry also explains that the northwest part of Arabia Petraea included the Sinai Peninsula (which isn't considered part of the modern Arabian Peninsula).

The Merriam-Webster's Geographical Dictionary entries for Arabia, Arabia Petraea, Arabia Felix, and Arabia Deserta simply say 'SEE ARABIAN PENINSULA'. The Merriam-Webster's Geographical Dictionary entry for Arabistan says 1. Peninsula. Asia. See ARABIAN PENINSULA. 2. Province. Iran. see KHUZESTAN.

It is a fact that Eilat Israel, Aqaba Jordan, and Taba, Egypt were all located in Arabia Petraea and that Islamic and Latin geographers considered it and the modern peninsula as parts of one geographical unit.

In the late 1980's Kamal Salibi explained:

'Later, when the term bilad al-Yaman came to refer in a special way to the south-western parts of the peninsula, which are today North and South Yemen, the Arab geographers began to speak of the peninsula as a whole as jazirat al-Arab, or the peninsula of the Arabs, as distinct from the greater bilad al-Arab, or land of the Arabs in the sense of magna Arabia.'A House of Many Mansions: The History of Lebanon Reconsidered, By Kamal Suleiman Salibi, Published by University of California Press, 1988, ISBN 0520071964, pages 60-61

harlan (talk) 23:28, 7 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

P.S. A sizable portion of the Arabian Peninsula is shown on the maps used to illustrate the territories of Greater Israel and the Land of Israel.