Maghreb

The Maghreb, also known as the Greater Maghreb and Northwest Africa, is the western part of the Arab world. The Maghreb region comprises western and central North Africa, including Algeria, Libya, Mauritania, Morocco, Tunisia, and the disputed territory of Western Sahara. As of 2018, the region had a population of over 100 million people.

The Maghreb is usually defined as encompassing much of the northern part of continental Africa, including a large portion of the Sahara Desert, while excluding Egypt and the Sudan, which are considered to be located in the Mashriq — the eastern part of the Arab world. The traditional definition of the Maghreb — which restricted its scope to the Atlas Mountains and the coastal Mediterranean plains of Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia and Libya — was expanded in recent decades to today include Mauritania and the disputed territory of Western Sahara. During the era of al-Andalus on the Iberian Peninsula (711–1492), the Maghreb's inhabitants — the Muslim and Jewish Maghrebis — were known by Europeans as the "Moors". The Greeks referred to the region as the "Land of the Atlas", referring to its Atlas Mountains.

Before the establishment of modern states of the region during the 20th century, the Maghreb most commonly referred to a smaller area encompassing Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia — between the and the Atlas Mountains. It often also included the territory of eastern Libya, and it always excluded what is now considered modern Mauritania. As recently as the early-to-mid 20th century, the term "Maghreb" was exclusively used to refer to the western Mediterranean region of coastal North Africa in general, and to Algeria, Morocco, and Tunisia in particular.

The region comprising the Maghreb was somewhat unified as an independent political entity under the kingdom of Numidia, followed briefly by the Kingdom of Mauretania, then Roman rule. The Germanic Vandals invaded after that, followed by the equally brief re-establishment of a weak Roman rule by the Byzantine Empire. The Islamic caliphates came to power under the Umayyad Caliphate, the Abbasid Caliphate and the Fatimid Caliphate. The most enduring rule was that of the local Arab empires of the Aghlabids, Idrisids, Salihids, Sulaymanids, Umayyads of Cordoba, Hammudids, Nasrids, Saadians, Alawites and the Sennusids, as well as the Berber empires of the Ifranids, Almoravids, Almohads, Hammadids, Zirids, Marinids, Zayyanids, Hafsids and Wattasids, extending from the 8th to 13th centuries. The Ottoman Empire also controlled parts of the region for a period.

Centuries of Arab migrations to the Maghreb since the 7th century shifted the demographic scope of the Maghreb in favor of the Arabs. During the mid-to-late 19th and early 20th centuries, the region was administered by European powers: France (Algeria, Tunisia, most of Morocco, and Mauritania) Italy (Libya), and Spain (northern Morocco and Western Sahara). Italy was expelled from North Africa by the Allies in World War II. Decolonization of the region continued in the decades thereafter, with violent conflicts such as the Algerian War, the Ifni War, and the Western Sahara War.

Algeria, Libya, Mauritania, Morocco, and Tunisia established the Arab Maghreb Union in 1989 to promote cooperation and economic integration in a common market. The union implicitly included Western Sahara under Morocco's membership. However, this progress was short-lived, and the union is now largely dormant. Tensions between Algeria and Morocco over Western Sahara re-emerged, reinforced by the unresolved border dispute between the two countries. These two conflicts have hindered progress on the union's joint goals.