> From Wikipedia: Arabs are a population inhabiting the Arab world.

Also from Wikipedia: Persia, present day Iran, is not part of the Arab world.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arab_world

This is the Arab world today, not at that time.

namirez's point is that the historical people mentioned are Persians being called Arabs. And there are Persians that would take offense to this association.

> And there are Persians that would take offense to this association.

Believe me, it's the same here in North-Africa and Arabs are really loathed. But again, it's a nomination that's often mistaken for an ethnicity.

Much of North Africa is considered part of the Arab world today, as it often refers to places where a dialect of Arabic is spoken and the culture has been affected in parallel. This is a key difference as Persian isn't even considered to be in the same language family as Arabic, unlike the dialects of Arabic that are predominant in the region approximately spanning Morocco to Egypt.

Dialects like French? Ha!

No, not like French. Around 85% of Moroccans are fluent in Moroccan Arabic and about 72% of Algerians speak Algerian Arabic, more than any other language (particularly Berber and French) in their respective countries as far as I can tell. A similar story exists in Tunisia, despite a majority of the country also apparently speaking French.

I think it's pretty fair to call these dialects of Arabic the predominant languages.