page_title: Arab world
section_title: Geography
hierarchical_section_title: Arab world / Geography
context_page_description: The Arab world, also known as the Arab nation, the Arabsphere, or the Arab states, consists of the 22 Arab countries which are members of the Arab League. A majority of these countries are located in Western Asia, North Africa, and the Horn of Africa; the southernmost member, the Comoros, is an island country off the coast of East Africa. The region stretches from the Atlantic Ocean in the west to the Arabian Sea in the east, and from the Mediterranean Sea in the north to the Indian Ocean in the southeast. The eastern part of the Arab world is known as the Mashriq, and the western part as the Maghreb. Arabic is used as the lingua franca throughout the Arab world.
  Malta, an island country in Southern Europe whose national language also derives from Arabic, is not included in the region. Similarly, Chad, Eritrea, and Israel recognize Arabic as one of their official or working languages but are not included in the region because they are not members of the Arab League. The Arab world has a combined population of around 422 million inhabitants and a gross domestic product of $2.782 trillion.
context_section_description: The Arab World stretches across more than 13,000,000 square kilometres (5,000,000 sq mi) of North Africa and the part of North-East Africa and South-West Asia. The eastern part of the Arab world is called the Mashriq. Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia, Libya and Mauritania are the Maghreb or Maghrib.
  The term "Arab" often connotes the Arabian Peninsula, but the larger (and more populous) part of the Arab World is North Africa. Its eight million square kilometers include two of the largest countries of the African continent, Algeria (2.4 million km²) in the center of the region and Sudan (1.9 million km²) in the southeast. Algeria is about three-quarters the size of India, or about one-and-a-half times the size of Alaska, the largest state in the United States. The largest country in the Arab Western Asia is Saudi Arabia (2 million km²).
  At the other extreme, the smallest autonomous mainland Arab country is Lebanon (10,452 km²), and the smallest island Arab country is Bahrain (665 km²).
  Notably, every Arab country borders a sea or ocean, with the exception of the Arab region of northern Chad, which is completely landlocked. Iraq is actually nearly landlocked, as it has only a very narrow access to the Persian Gulf.
caption: The Maghreb (Western Arab world)
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