User:Monochrome Monitor/Under Construction
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Sources to use for constructing this page:
Encyclopedia of the Peoples of Africa and the Middle East
Ancient Semitic Civilizations (Sabatino Moscati)
Vrienden en verwanten: liber amicorum Alex van der Leeden
Journal of Semitic Studies
Semites and anti-semites
Lectures on the Religions of the Semites
Einführung in Die Altorientalistik
The Semitic peoples (from the biblical "Shem", Hebrew: שם) are an Afroasiatic ethno-linguistic grouping of Middle Eastern and North African origin, identified by their use of the Semitic languages. Semitic languages are spoken by more than 330 million people across much of Western Asia, North Africa and the Horn of Africa, as well as in large expatriate communities in North America and Europe. The term was first used in the 1780s by German orientalists von Schlözer and Eichhorn, who derived the name from Shem, one of the three sons of Noah in the Book of Genesis.
Modern Semitic peoples include Arabs, Berbers, Jews and Samaritans, Assyrians, Mandeans, Syriacs, Druze, Maronites, and Ethiopian Semites.