Characterizing the Language Boundaries of the Arab Middle East and North Africa: A Geolinguistic Analysis Moran Zaga and Ronen Zeidel Contents Introduction ....................................................................................... 2 The Relationship Between Language Community, Territoriality, and the State ................ 3 The Significance of the Arabic Language in History ............................................ 4 The Role of Language in the Setting of International Borders of the Arab States .............. 6 Significance of the Arabic Language Since Emergence of the Arab States ..................... 8 Comparing the Linguistic and Political Boundaries ............................................. 11 Conclusion ........................................................................................ 13 References ........................................................................................ 14 Abstract For many decades, the political structure of the Arab states in the Middle East and North Africa (i.e., the Arab world) has demonstrated relative stability. Although much has been written about the colonial borders of the region and very few attempts were made to challenge them, the international borders were generally taken for granted. However, in the last decade, the intensifying expression of civil society and non-state organizations in the region has weakened these borders, especially by increasing cross-border activities. This trend can be related to the long-lasting prominence of the ethnolinguistic affiliation of the Arabic-speaking community. Pan-Arab solidarity is primarily an emotional and a cultural phe- nomenon, but it does also represent territorial manifestation that can be roughly confined by imaginary ethnolinguistic borders. As Pan-Arabism and modern M. Zaga (*) Department of Geography and Environmental Studies, University of Haifa, Haifa, Israel e-mail: mzaga@staff.haifa.ac.il R. Zeidel The Moshe Dayan Center for Middle Eastern and African Studies, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv, Israel e-mail: vesnaronen@hotmail.com © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019 S. D. Brunn, R. Kehrein (eds.), Handbook of the Changing World Language Map, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-73400-2_115-1 1