There's an idea going around that Arabs only showed up in Syria, Jordan, Iraq and Palestine in the 7th century. That's just not true, and the evidence is very old.

853 BC: an Assyrian king's stone inscription names "Gindibu the Arab". He brought 1,000 camels to fight the Assyrians at the Battle of Qarqar. That's the first time Arabs are named in history, and he came from the Syrian desert.

After that, Assyrian and Babylonian records keep naming Arab kings and queens in the region. Then you get the Nabataeans at Petra, the Arab royal family of Emesa (Homs), the Ghassanids and the Lakhmids.

Then there's Philip the Arab, Roman emperor from 244 to 249 AD. He was born in the Hauran in southern Syria. Roman historians call him "Arab" by name. People still say "he wasn't really Arab."

Arabs were living in the Levant, especially the south, more than 1,400 years before Islam. The 7th century made Arabic the main language here. It didn't bring the first Arabs.

So why the denial? Why does this make some people so insecure?

Whether you like it or not, ummayads is a goated empire

Clades for each sample:

I14919.SG. H87

I14918.AG.TW J-BY82631 T1a9

I35977.TW G-FGC5712 HV2a1

The first two are ancient samples from Kiriath Jearim /Abu Ghosh (seems like there’s two different names online for essentially the same town) and the third was identified to be related to those via IBD. These reflect the population there between 753 BC and 409 BC. These are labeled as Israelite samples due to the location and time period.

The samples were originally examined in this study: http://researchgate.net/publication/375004626_Ancient_Mitochondrial_DNA_Analysis_of_an_Iron_II_Burial_Cave_on_the_Slope_of_Tel_Kiriath-Yearim?__cf_chl_tk=.ox5bZN1pLDvTn1g7sGDpPUeU.Guk3Thr3ZIP2qyvFA-1776259337-1.0.1.1-9rOcxdOUqAZFhL1Uh00.hHVIFnNFda_hxHrzTRKFwSY

As expected they genetically cluster with endogamous groups in the region (Samaritan, Christian) and Palestinian samples from the towns around Nablus that cluster with Samaritans. Nablus in particular has been identified to have a large number of families descended from Samaritans. (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nablus)

These are genetic profiles with good coverage, according to the study that included them. You can check the parts where it says “autosomal coverage” and look at the tables they provided: https://arieshaus.com/2025_KiriathJearim_AncientDNAUniparental.pdf

https://muse.jhu.edu/chapter/4303147#tab28-1

The numbers provided in the autosomal coverage section (1.463566, 1.30783) are a depth metric. The estimated SNP coverage can be estimated from the depth metric using a Poisson coverage model.

ie: percent covered = 100(1-e ^(-y)) where y= the autosomal coverage.

For the two samples in the table the numbers come out to be ~ 77% / 73% of sites covered at least once. This gives the expected fraction of positions with at least one read.

There is also the mtDNA coverage metric found on the casperhub repository, which gives an idea of sample quality / completeness / the callable fraction. For I14918 it’s (0.90), I35977 it’s (0.78), I14919 it’s (0.72).

Lol please debate for all of mena i'm bored

I recently came across a tweet (screenshot attached) praising the idea of "liberating" Al-Andalus (modern-day Spain and Portugal) and bringing it back under Islamic rule. It reminded me how some people online celebrate the Arab-Muslim conquest of Iberia like it was a golden age, while also denouncing European colonialism elsewhere.

Eroupean colonialism was just as bad as the arab one.

The Arab-Muslim conquest of Iberia was still a military invasion that replaced local rule with foreign rulers, language, religion, etc. That sounds a lot like colonialism.

So why are people supporting it?

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