Thus far, we have traced the sociopolitical drivers of Arab ethnogenesis to the second/eighth century, and we found that the exceptional conditions of early Islam fostered a new idea of ‘Arab community’ as a means for Conquerors to uphold their elite status once the initial burst of conquests had passed. The Conquerors’ towns (al-amṣār) bear striking parallels to the conditions which catalyse ethnogenesis, but the process of creating shared consciousness of Arab community was nonetheless uneven as a consequence of various obstacles impeding the capacity of Arabness to reconcile the Conquerors into one integrated family. Power struggles, regional rivalries and doctrinal strife, alongside an array of alternative communal identities which the Conquerors could choose to embrace (especially Maʿadd and Yemen), and the distinction stressed between Arab identity and nomadic Arabian aʿrāb complicated consciousness of unified community and homeland, and we can appreciate why early Arabic literature and poetry express disputed traditions of Arab genealogy and varied terms of communal belonging.

The broad consolidation of Arab genealogies and the definition of ʿarab as a kin-group (umma /jīl) in later third/ninth century and subsequent writings surveyed in the last chapter indicate a resolution of earlier Arabness ambiguity, and suggest that key changes occurred in the underlying society and literary circles to facilitate the developed discourses. The contemporaneous consolidation of Arab genealogy alongside the literary recording of pre- Islamic Arabian history and Islam's rise as the cohesive ‘Arab story’ familiar today marks the third/ninth century as the period when Arabness became furnished with both a consolidated genealogy and ancient history, the familiar trappings of an ethnic identity. That period thus appears a climax of early Islamic Arab ethnogenesis, reflecting an underlying Arabness vigour in a society where a self-aware community of Arabs enjoyed a sense of cohesion and status which fuelled the literary trumpeting of Arab collective identity and achievements. Understanding the social conditions between the second/ eighth and third/ninth centuries to explain the emergence of these classic Arabness discourses is the next step to critically interpret the genesis and meanings of the vast Muslim-era literature about Arab lore.