If you would imagine a Venn diagram, North Africans are the cross between the Arabs and the Africans. Arabs being the culture, and African being the geographical region. The Arab culture was spread by the sword about 1,300 years ago.

I can see that. It confuses me mostly because North Africans seem, at least to the eye, far more similar to Arabs than they seem to sub-saharan Africans for instance. Arab influence in North Africa being so much more strong than the influence of any other group. Culturally, genetically etc etc.

Just interesting.

Aren’t “Arabs” from the Arabic peninsula (sometimes including Israel and Turkey et al) and North Africans from … North Africa? They may be similar in many ways but they’re geographically distinct.

Arab can mean multiple things:

  a: a member of an Arabic-speaking people
  b: a member of the Semitic people of the Arabian Peninsula

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/Arab