The Arabs, a name given to the ancient and present-day inhabitants of the Arabian Peninsula and often applied to the peoples closely allied to them in ancestry, language, religion, and culture. Presently more than 200 million Arabs are living mainly in 21 countries; they constitute the overwhelming majority of the population in Saudi Arabia, Syria, Yemen, Jordan, Lebanon, Iraq, Egypt, and the nations of North Africa, such as Sudan, Libya, Tunis Algeria and Morocco. The Arabic language is the main symbol of cultural unity among these people, but the religion of Islam provides another common bond for the majority of Arabs. Language and religion are united in the Qur'an (Koran), the sacred scripture of Islam.

Arabia was the site of a flourishing civilization long before the Christian era. In the centuries following the death of the Prophet Muhammad in ad632, Arab influence spread throughout the Middle East, to parts of Europe, particularly Sicily and Spain, to sub-Saharan Africa, to the subcontinent of India, and to Madagascar and the Malay Archipelago. The cultural and scientific contributions of the Arabs to Western civilization, and the world, during the Middle Ages was highly significant, especially in astronomy, mathematics, medicine, and philosophy.

In spite of the old and rich history and culture of the Arab World, little is understood and known about it here in the west, specially among ordinary citizens.  The recent political events in the Middle East and the barrage of slanted information and half truths in some of the western media, have motivated us to publish this Multi-Media book with an extensive compilation of cultural, political, historical, geographical and economical information about the individual countries of the Arab World.  The Middle East is the birth place of three major religions; Judaism, Christianity and Islam, for that fact, we have provided Historical and contextual information about these three main religions.

No cultural publication is complete without some knowledge about the food and music of these regions.  So, we have provided several cooking recipes for selected countries, as well as a few musical pieces from every one of these regions to provide the reader with additional cultural understanding.