Ajam

Ajam is a historical term used in the Arab world to designate non-Arab peoples. It has most often been applied to Persians and Persian-speaking communities, but it has also referred more broadly to peoples and languages outside the Arabic-speaking world. In classical Islamic and Arab historiography, Ajam signified others who did not speak Arabic and did not identify as Arab, functioning as an ethnolinguistic label within a predominantly Arab cultural sphere.

Etymology and usage have varied over time. The word originates in Arabic and has appeared in medieval and early modern sources as a way to distinguish Arabs from non-Arabs. While it was often used descriptively, later usage could carry pejorative or ethnocentric overtones, depending on the context and speaker. The term is thus considered complex and its connotations are not fixed across eras or regions.

In modern usage, Ajam can remain a general reference to non-Arabs in Arab-majority societies, particularly in parts of the Gulf, where it has occasionally been used to describe non-Arab residents or workers who speak languages other than Arabic. The connotation of the term is highly contextual: it may be neutral in some contexts and disparaging in others, reflecting social and political attitudes toward identity, language, and ethnicity.

Culturally, Ajam appears in historical and literary texts to mark East–West connections within the Islamic world, and in discussions of Persian culture and language as distinct from Arab culture. Today, the term is encountered in scholarly, historical, and occasional everyday usage, with awareness of its potentially sensitive undertones.