By unfastening Arab identity from conventional cultural stereotypes, Bedouinism and ancient pre-Islamic Arabian bloodlines, this book sought to reveal the complexities and changing nature of historic Arab identity. The book was intended as an invitation to begin rethinking Arabness afresh, and by highlighting the shortcomings inherent in the static, monolithic manner in which historical Arab communities have often been discussed, our analysis sought to reappraise historic Arabness as an ethnicity, tracking its evolution and contextualising its development with close attention to the sociopolitical and ‘cultural stuff’ factors that sustain ethnogenesis.

Taking stock, ethnogenesis and Max Weber's ideas seem to do a world of good for our understanding of Arab origins, pre-Islamic Arabia and the rise of Islam. Theorising the origin of Arab communities as a Muslim-era phenomenon helped unblock difficulties in interpreting memories of pre- Islamic Arabia, for we are relieved of the search for pre-Islamic Arabs and can focus on studying the region's communities as the wholly diverse panoply of peoples as they actually were. Our model of Arab ethnogenesis also prompts reassessment of the traditional interpretation of Islam's rise as a ‘national movement’ of Arabs and the customary focus on the ‘Arab conquests’ as the history of a militarised migration. Instead, the rise of the novel community of ‘Arabs’ in the wake of the conquests signals deeper currents were at work, and can reorient study towards the Conquerors’ achievements of crafting novel forms of statecraft, urban networks and societies as a consequence of the unprecedented circumstances their conquests created. We ought no longer assume with confidence that ‘Saracen barbarians’ occupied the ailing body of Late Antiquity and ‘civilised’ themselves in its trappings: instead the Conquerors knew of themselves as Emigrants (muhājirūn) with a distinct message and code, and as they developed their doctrines into the religion of Islam and distinguished themselves from conquered populations, they took on a new Arab guise for themselves and creatively tried to reorganise their world in its image.