@what is “occupation”
You asked; “now where do you get your information (besides Wikipedia?)”
I used The Jewish Virtual Library (a division of the American-Israeli Cooperative Enterprise)and the Catholic library as it is most the most extensive containing also non catholic works for historical references.
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/13706a.htm
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Judaism/premo.html
Best to start here:
http://www.wsu.edu:8080/~dee/HEBREWS/HEBREWS.HTM
In a Biblical sense, Semites are peoples whose ancestry can be traced back to Shem, Noah’s eldest son. The most prominent Semites today are Arabs and Jews as they both share a common ancient history that is reflected by the many similar stories of Islam and Judaism as well as of course their semitic language.
A HEBREW is someone descended from Heber (or, “Eber”), one of the great-grandsons of Shem. So all Hebrews are Semites, but not all Semites are Hebrews. (Both Sunnite Arabs and Jews are Semites, and Hebrews, as well as Jews.)
Six generations after Heber, Abraham was born to his line, so Abraham was both a Hebrew and a Semite, born of the line of Heber and Shem.
Ishmael was born of Abraham, and (Sunnite) Arabs (and specifically Muslims) consider themselves to be descendants of him, so they are both Semitic and Hebrews. Isaac was born of Abraham, then Jacob of Isaac. Jacob’s name was changed to “Israel,” and he fathered 12 sons. His sons and their descendants are called Israelites, and they would therefore be both Semitic and Hebrew. However, this would not make either Abraham or Isaac “Israelites.” Those who poorly use the words “Jew” and Israelite, call Abraham a Jew, even though Abraham was not even an Israelite, and where the word “Jew” is not used in the Bible until 1,000 years AFTER Abraham.
One of Jacob-Israel’s children was Judah (Hebrew – Yehudah). His descendants were called Yehudim (“Judahites”). In Greek this reads Ioudaioi (“Judeans”). The confusing thing here is that almost all Bible translations employ the word “Jew,” which is a modern, shortened form of the word “Judahite.” Every time you come to the word “Jew” in the Old Scriptures, you should read “Judahite;” and every time you come to the word “Jew” in the New Scriptures, you should read it as “Judean.”
The term Semite was proposed at first for the languages related to the Hebrew by Ludwig Schlözer, in Eichhorn’s “Repertorium”, vol. VIII (Leipzig, 1781), p. 161. Through Eichhorn the name then came into general usage (cf. his “Einleitung in das Alte Testament” (Leipzig, 1787), I, p. 45. In his “Gesch. der neuen Sprachenkunde”, pt. I (Göttingen, 1807) it had already become a fixed technical term.
The ancient Semitic populations were pastoral Nomads who several centuries before the Christian Era were migrating in large numbers from Arabia to Mesopotamia, the coasts of the Mediterranean Sea, and the Nile River delta. Jews and other Semites settled in villages in Judea, southern Palestine.
The tribes which inhabited these territories, and to some extent still inhabit them, show in language, traits, and character a sharply characterized individuality which separates them distinctly from other peoples. Their languages axe closely related to one another, not being almost independent branches of language, like the great groups of Indo-Germanic languages, but rather dialects of a single linguistic group. Physically, also, the Semitic form it is found in Arabia. Here also the phonetics and partly also the grammatical structure of the Semitic language, are most purely, as the vocabulary is most completely, preserved. From these as well as from other circumstances the conclusion has been drawn that Arabia should be considered the original home of the Semitic peoples.
And so in short The growth of Islam in these countries was “NOT” due to a sudden influx of “Arabs” but gradual conversion to Islam by the NATIVE POPULATION who later were termed “Arabs”. The predominant population of Mesopotamia (today’s Iraq), Syria, Jordan, Palestine, Lebanon and Egypt were “Arab” Christians.
