How many dialects of Arabic are there?

On the other hand, Arabic is divided into over 27 dialects. Almost every Arab state has at least one local dialect of its own. they can be divided into 5 major branches, the Peninsula Arabic, which is the Arabic used in the Arabian peninsula, with around 9 main dialects, Arabic of the Nile Valley, which includes the Masri, Saedi, Sudanese and Chadic Arabic, the Arabic of the Fertile Crescent, which includes the Bedawi, Levant Arabic, Iraqi Arabic and North Mesopotamian Arabic, the Magharbi Arabic, which includes the Dialects used in Mauritania, Morocco, Libya, Algeria and Tunisia, also another category of Arabic is the other isolated dialects of Arabic, like the Judeo-Arabic, Mediterranean Arabic, Nubi Arabic, and the juba Arabic, which have greatly been affected by these communities' own pronunciation, culture and native tongue.

Demographics of the Arab League

The Arab League (League of Arab States) is a social, cultural and economic grouping of 22 Arab states in the Arabic speaking world. As of, the combined population of all the Arab states was around 407-420 million people.

The most populous Arab League member state is Egypt, the North African nation with a population of /1e6 round 0 million residents. Comoros, the Indian Ocean nation is the least populated, with around inhabitants.

The population of the Arab League as estimated by the UN in 2017 was 414,727,833. No exact figures of the League's annual population growth, fertility rate, or mortality rate are known to exist.

Most of the Arab League's population is concentrated in and around major urban areas.

Muhammad's Islamic Ummah and Christianity were all reportedly founded in or near areas that are now Arab League countries. Consequently, the majority of the Arab League's citizens are either Muslims or Christians. The countries of the Arab League host several holy cities and other religiously significant locations, including Alexandria, Mecca, Medina, Kirkuk, Arbil, and Baghdad. Sunni Muslims constitute the majority of the Arab League's residents. However, large numbers of Shi'a Muslims make up the majority in areas of Lebanon, Iraq, and Bahrain.

Christianity is the second largest religion in the League, with over 20 million Christians living in countries such as Lebanon, Egypt, Iraq, Bahrain, Syria, Kuwait and Jordan. There are smaller Jewish populations living mainly in the western part of the Arab league. Places such as Bahrain, Morocco, Algeria, Yemen, Tunisia, Syria, Egypt and Iraq all have Jewish populations. However, most Arab Jews emigrated from the Arab states to Israel after its founding in 1948. Other minor religions such as Druze religion, the Bahá'í Faith, Mandeanism, Yazdanism, Zoroastrianism, Shabak religion and Yarsan are practiced on a much smaller scale.
Arab League member states by religion (percentage of population)

Arabic is the Arab League's official language, but additional languages are often used in the daily lives of some of the League's citizens. Currently, three major languages other than Arabic are used widely: Kurdish in northern Iraq and parts of Syria, Berber in North Africa, and Somali in the Horn of Africa.

There are several minority languages that are still spoken today, such as Afar, Armenian, Hebrew, Nubian, Persian, Aramaic, Mandic, Syriac, and Turkish.
Arabic is a non-native language to 20% of the Arab League's population, with the Somali, Berber and Kurdish languages considered the most widely used after Arabic.

According to the League of Arab States, the Arab League is an organization of independent Arab States in North and Northeast Africa and Southwest Asia. Member nations are in turn bound by the Charter of the Arab League.

Many Arab countries in the Persian Gulf have sizable (10–30%) non-Arab populations. Iraq, Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, United Arab Emirates and Oman have a Persian speaking minority. The same countries also have Hindi-Urdu speakers and Filipinos as sizable minority. Balochi speakers are a good size minority in Oman. Additionally, countries like Bahrain, UAE, Oman and Kuwait have significant non-Arab and non-Muslim minorities (10–20%) like Hindus and Christians from India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal and the Philippines.

Many non-Arab countries bordering the Arab states have large Arab populations, such as in Chad, Israel, Mali, Niger, Senegal and Turkey.

The table below shows the distribution of populations in the Arab world and Israel, as well as the official language(s) within the various Arab states.

The Arab world has between 400,000 and 500,000 Armenians inhabiting its geographical area. Armenians are largely concentrated in countries such as Lebanon 150,000 - 250,000 and Syria 100,000 to 150,000 and to a lesser degree Egypt and Iraq, but Armenians can also be found in countries like Qatar and the UAE. These Armenians are economic migrants from Lebanon and Syria.

Most Armenians are Christians mainly following the Orthodox Armenian Apostolic Church. The church has one of its two headquarters in Antelias, Lebanon, called The Catholicosate of the Great House of Cilicia (the other being in Armenia called Mother See of Holy Etchmiadzin). There are also Armenian Catholics. The world headquarters of the Armenian Catholic Church is also located in Beirut, Lebanon (and historically in Bzoummar, Lebanon). There are also a minority Armenian Evangelical Protestants. The Middle East headquarters of the Armenian Evangelical Church is in Beirut called Union of the Armenian Evangelical Churches in the Near East.

Assyrians (also known as Chaldo-Assyrians) can be found in Iraq, north eastern Syria, and to a lesser degree north western Iran and south eastern Turkey. They are an ancient Semitic people who retain Aramaic as a spoken language. They are exclusively Christian and are descendants of the ancient pre Arab Assyrians/Mesopotamians. Almost all Christians in Iraq are ethnic Assyrians, where they number approximately 400,000. 500,000 are in Syria but are harder to identify, because they are often included in with the general Christian population and speak Arabic, however the Christians of the Tur Abdin and Al Hasakah regions in the north east are predominantly Assyrian.

Berbers are an ethnic group indigenous to North Africa. They are distributed in an area stretching from the Atlantic Ocean to the Siwa Oasis in Egypt, and from the Mediterranean Sea to the Niger River. Historically, they spoke Berber languages, which together form the Berber branch of the Afro-Asiatic family. Since the Muslim conquest of North Africa in the seventh century, a large number of Berbers inhabiting the Maghreb have acquired different degrees of knowledge of varieties of Maghrebi Arabic.

Circassians are a people who originate in the North Caucasus. They are predominantly Muslim, and can be found in Iraq, Syria, Jordan, Israel and Lebanon in relatively small numbers.

Egyptian Coptic Christians are a religious group who do not usually identify themselves as Arabic and they follow the Coptic Orthodox Church. They place heavy emphasis on the Egyptian aspect of their identity and their Christian heritage. Their numbers are heavily disputed but are estimated to compromise roughly 10% of the Egyptian population. They are mainly followers of the Coptic Orthodox Church of Alexandria, there are however a minority among them who are members of the Coptic Catholic Church, and an even smaller group who belong to the Coptic Evangelical Church. The Egyptian Coptic language, which is a late script that was developed in Roman Egypt, written in the Greek alphabet and descending from the late form of the Egyptian language of ancient Egypt, continues to be used as the liturgical language of the Coptic Orthodox Church of Alexandria.

The Jewish tribes of Arabia were Arabian tribes professing the Jewish faith that inhabited the Arabian Peninsula before and during the advent of Islam. It is not always clear whether they were originally Israelite in ancestry, genealogically Arab tribes that converted to Judaism, or a mixture of both. In Islamic tradition the Jewish tribes of the Hejaz were seen as the offspring of the ancient Israelites. According to Muslim sources, they spoke a language other than Arabic, which Al-Tabari claims was Persian. This implies they were connected to the major Jewish center in Babylon. Certain Jewish traditions records the existence of nomadic tribes such as the Rechabites that converted to Judaism in antiquity. The tribes collapsed with the rise of Islam, with many either converting or fleeing the Arab peninsula. Some of those tribes are thought to have merged into Yemenite Jewish community, while others, like the residents of Yatta consider themselves Islamized descendants of Khaybar, a Jewish tribe of Arabia.

Jews from Arab countries – included in the Mizrahi Jewish communities– are not categorized as, and do not consider themselves to be, Arabs, as Jews are a separate nation from Arabs, with different history and culture. However, sometimes the term Arab Jews is used to describe Jews from Arab countries, though the term is highly controversial. Sociologist Sammy Smooha stated "This ("Arab Jews") term does not hold water. It is absolutely not a parallel to 'Arab Christian'". Those who dispute the historicity of the term make the claim that Middle Eastern Jews are similar to Assyrians, Berbers, and other Middle Eastern groups who live in Arab societies as distinct minority groups with distinct identity and therefore are not categorized as Arabs.

In the northern regions of Iraq (15-20%) and Syria (10%) live a group called the Kurds, an Indo-European ethnic group who speak Kurdish, a language closely related to Persian and using Persian alphabet (In Turkey, Kurds use Latin alphabet). The majority of Kurds are Sunni Muslim, others are Alevi Muslim, with Christian and Yarsan minorities. The nationalist aspiration for self-rule or for a state of Kurdistan has created conflict between Kurdish minorities and their governments in Iraq, Iran, Syria and Turkey

Mandaeans, sometimes also called Sabians, are a people found mainly in southern Iraq. Their numbers total no more than 70,000. They follow Mandaeism, a gnostic religion.

Mhallami are a tiny minority of the Assyrian/Syriac people who have converted to Islam but retained their Syriac culture.

Nubians, found in Northern Sudan and Southern Egypt, are a different ethnicity from their northern and southern neighbors in Egypt and Sudan, numbering 1.7 million in Sudan and Egypt. The Nubian people in Sudan inhabit the region between Wadi Halfa in the north and Aldaba in the south. The main Nubian groups from north to south are the Halfaweyen, Sikut (Sickkout), Mahas, and Danagla. They speak different dialects of the Nubian language.

Ancient Nubians were famous for their vast wealth, their trade between Central Africa and the lower Nile valley civilizations, including Egypt, their skill and precision with the bow, their 23-letter alphabet, the use of deadly poison on the heads of their arrows, their great military, their advanced civilization, and their century-long rule over the united upper and lower Egyptian kingdoms.

Roma are to be found in many parts of the Middle East and North Africa; their numbers are unknown. They speak their own language and may loosely follow the predominant religion of the country they live in.

Shabaks are mainly found in Iraq, they are either Muslim or follow native religions. They are also related to Kurds, but like the Yazidi, emphasise their separate identity.

Somali and Arabic are the two official languages in Somalia, both of which belong to the Afro-Asiatic family. Article 3 of the constitution outlines the country's founding principles, establishing it as a Muslim state, and a member of the Arab and African nations. About 85% of local residents are ethnic Somalis, who have historically inhabited the northern part of the country. Many self-identify as Somali instead of Arab despite centuries-old ties to Arabia. There are also a number of Benadiris, Bravanese, Bantus, Bajunis, Ethiopians, Indians, Pakistanis, Persians, Britons and Italians.

Djibouti, whose demographics are approximately 60% Somali and 35% Afar, is in a similar position. Arabic is one of the official languages, 94% of the nation's population is Muslim, and its location on the Red Sea places it in close proximity to the Arabian Peninsula. Somali and Afar are also recognized national languages.

The Arab world is home to sizeable populations of Turks throughout North Africa, the Levant, and the Arabian Peninsula.

There is a notable Turkish minority in Egypt; prior to the Egyptian revolution in 1919, the ruling and upper classes were mainly Turkish, or of Turkish descent (see Turks in Egypt), which was part of the heritage from the Ottoman rule of Egypt.

In the Levant the Turks are scattered throughout the region. In Iraq and Syria the Turkish minorities are commonly referred to as "Turkmen", "Turkman" and "Turcoman"; these terms have historically been used to designate Turkish speakers in Arab areas, or Sunni Muslims in Shitte areas. The majority of Iraqi Turkmen and Syrian Turkmen are the descendants of Ottoman Turkish settlers. and share close cultural and linguistic ties with Turkey, particularly the Anatolian region. In 2013 the Iraqi Ministry of Planning estimated that Iraqi Turkmen numbered 3 million out of the country's 34.7 million inhabitants (approximately 9% of the total population). Estimates of the Syrian Turkmen population range from several hundred thousand to 3.5 million. There is also Turkish minorities located in Jordan (Turks in Jordan) and Lebanon (Turks in Lebanon). In Lebanon, they live mainly in the villages of Aydamun and Kouachra in the Akkar District, as well as in Baalbek, Beirut, and Tripoli. The Lebanese Turks number approximately 80,000. However, there has also been a recent influx of Syrian Turkmen refugees (125,000 to 150,000 in 2015) who now outnumber the long establish Ottoman descended Turkish minority.

In the Arabian Peninsula, there are Turkish minorities who have lived in the region since the Ottoman era. The Turks live predominately in Saudi Arabia (see Turks in Saudi Arabia) and Yemen (see Turks in Yemen).

The Yazidi are a religious Kurdish community who represent an ancient religion that is linked to Zoroastrianism and Sufism. They number 500,000 in Iraq and 14,000 in Syria.

North Africans are the inhabitants of the North Africa (Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya and Egypt). Maghrebis mostly speak Maghrebi Arabic, which is descended from Classical Arabic and has a marked Berber substratum, while Egyptians speak Egyptian Arabic which is mainly based on Coptic grammar rather than Classical Arabic.

In 647 AD (the year 27 of the Hegira), the first Muslim expedition to Africa took place. By 700 AD, the area had been conquered and converted to the Islamic faith. We know little of the early Islamic town, but by the tenth century the area outside of the fortress was once more filled with houses: on the site of the Roman baths over twelve of these were excavated, with large courtyards surrounded by long, thin, rooms.

After ruling over Cairo, the Fatimids left the rule in Tunisia and parts of eastern Algeria to the Zirids (972–1148). The invasion of Tunisia which was known as Ifriqiya, was done by the Banu Hilal, an Arab tribe encouraged by the Fatimids to seize North Africa.

Listed here are the human Y-chromosome DNA haplogroups in main regions of the Arab world (Maghreb, Mashriq and Arabian peninsula).

There are many varieties of Arabic (also called dialects of Arabic or vernacular languages) in existence. Arabic is a Semitic language within the Afroasiatic family that originated on the Arabian Peninsula. It is classified as a macrolanguage comprising 30 modern varieties, including its standard form. The largest divisions occur between the spoken languages of different regions. Some varieties of Arabic in North Africa, for example, are not easily comprehensible to an Arabic speaker from the Levant or the Persian Gulf. Within these broad regions further and considerable geographic distinctions exist, within countries, across country borders, even between cities and villages.

Varieties of Arabic

Another major distinction exists between the widely diverging colloquial spoken varieties, used for nearly all everyday speaking situations, and the formal standardized language, found mostly in writing or in prepared speech. The regionally prevalent variety is learned as the speaker's first language while the formal language is subsequently learned in school. The formal language itself varies between its modern iteration, Modern Standard Arabic (often called MSA in English) and the Classical Arabic that serves as its basis, though Arabic speakers typically do not make this distinction.

The largest differences between the classical/standard and the colloquial Arabic are the loss of grammatical case; a different and strict word order; the loss of the previous system of grammatical mood, along with the evolution of a new system; the loss of the inflected passive voice, except in a few relic varieties; restriction in the use of the dual number and (for most varieties) the loss of the feminine plural. Many Arabic dialects, Maghrebi Arabic in particular, also have significant vowel shifts and unusual consonant clusters. Unlike other dialect groups, in the Maghrebi Arabic group, first person singular verbs begin with a n- (ن).

Further substantial differences exist between Bedouin and sedentary speech, the countryside and major cities, ethnic groups, religious groups, social classes, men and women, and the young and the old. These differences are to some degree bridgeable. Often, Arabic speakers can adjust their speech in a variety of ways according to the context and to their intentions—for example, to speak with people from different regions, to demonstrate their level of education or to draw on the authority of the spoken language.

Arabic is characterized by a wide number of varieties; however, Arabic speakers are often able to manipulate the way they speak based on the circumstances. There can be a number of motivations for changing one's speech: the formality of a situation, the need to communicate with people with different dialects, to get social approval, to differentiate oneself from the listener, when citing a written text, to differentiate between personal and professional or general matters, to clarify a point, and to shift to a new topic.

An important factor in the mixing or changing of Arabic is the concept of a prestige dialect. This refers to the level of respect accorded to a language or dialect within a speech community. The formal Arabic language carries a considerable prestige in most Arabic-speaking communities, depending on the context. This is not the only source of prestige, though. Many studies have shown that for most speakers, there is a prestige variety of vernacular Arabic. In Egypt, for non-Cairenes, the prestige dialect is Cairo Arabic. For Jordanian women from Bedouin or rural background, it may be the urban dialects of the big cities, especially including the capital Amman. Moreover, in certain contexts, a dialect relatively different from formal Arabic may carry more prestige than a dialect closer to the formal language—this is the case in Bahrain, for example.

Language mixes and changes in different ways. Arabic speakers often use more than one variety of Arabic within a conversation or even a sentence. This process is referred to as code-switching. For example, a woman on a TV program could appeal to the authority of the formal language by using elements of it in her speech in order to prevent other speakers from cutting her off. Another process at work is "leveling", the "elimination of very localised dialectical features in favour of more regionally general ones." This can affect all linguistic levels—semantic, syntactic, phonological, etc. The change can be temporary, as when a group of speakers with substantially different Arabics communicate, or it can be permanent, as often happens when people from the countryside move to the city and adopt the more prestigious urban dialect, possibly over a couple of generations.

This process of accommodation sometimes appeals to the formal language, but often does not. For example, villagers in central Palestine may try to use the dialect of Jerusalem rather than their own when speaking with people with substantially different dialects, particularly since they may have a very weak grasp of the formal language. In another example, groups of educated speakers from different regions will often use dialectical forms that represent a middle ground between their dialects rather than trying to use the formal language, to make communication easier and more comprehensible. For example, to express the existential "there is" (as in, "there is a place where..."), Arabic speakers have access to many different words:

In this case, is most likely to be used as it is not associated with a particular region and is the closest to a dialectical middle ground for this group of speakers. Moreover, given the prevalence of movies and TV shows in Egyptian Arabic, the speakers are all likely to be familiar with it. Iraqi "aku", Levantine "fīh" and North African "kayn" all evolve from Classical Arabic forms ("yakūn", "fīhi", "kā'in" respectively), but now sound very different.

Sometimes a certain dialect may be associated with backwardness and does not carry mainstream prestige—yet it will continue to be used as it carries a kind of covert prestige and serves to differentiate one group from another when necessary.

The greatest variations between kinds of Arabic are those between regional language groups. These can be divided many ways, but the following typology is usually used:
These large regional groups do not correspond to borders of modern states. In the western parts of the Arab world, varieties are referred to as الدارجة "ad-dārija", and in the eastern parts, as العامية "al-ʿāmmiyya". Nearby varieties of Arabic are mostly mutually intelligible, but faraway varieties tend not to be. Varieties west of Egypt are particularly disparate, with Egyptian Arabic speakers claiming difficulty in understanding North African Arabic speakers, while North African Arabic speakers' ability to understand other Arabic speakers is mostly due to the widespread popularity of Egyptian Standard and to a lesser extent, the Lebanese popular media (this phenomenon is called asymmetric intelligibility). One factor in the differentiation of the varieties is the influence from other languages previously spoken or still presently spoken in the regions, such as Coptic in Egypt, French, Ottoman Turkish, Italian, Spanish, Berber, Punic or Phoenician in North Africa, Himyaritic, Modern South Arabian and Old South Arabian in Yemen and Aramaic in the Levant. Speakers of mutually unintelligible varieties are often able to communicate by switching to Modern Standard Arabic.

Modern languages have also typically provided a significant number of new words, and have sometimes also influenced pronunciation or word order. Examples are Turkish and English in Egypt, French in North Africa and Syria, English and French in Lebanon, and English and Hebrew in Israel. However, a much more significant factor for all five dialect groups is, as Latin among Romance languages, retention (or change of meaning) of the form of Classical Arabic used in the Quran.

The following example illustrates similarities and differences between the literary, standardized varieties, and major urban dialects of Arabic. Maltese, a distantly related Siculo-Arabic language descended from Maghrebi Arabic is also provided.

"True pronunciations differ; transliterations used approach an approximate demonstration. Also, the pronunciation of Modern Standard Arabic differs significantly from region to region."
For the sake of comparison, consider the same sentence in German and Dutch:Or in Spanish and Portuguese:Some linguists do argue that the varieties of Arabic are different enough to qualify as separate languages in the way that Spanish and Portuguese or German and Dutch do. However, as Reem Bassiouney points out, perhaps the difference between 'language' and 'dialect' is to some degree political rather than linguistic.

"Peripheral" varieties of Arabic – that is, varieties spoken in countries where Arabic is not a dominant language and a lingua franca (e.g., Turkey, Iran, Cyprus, Chad, and Nigeria) – are particularly divergent in some respects, especially in their vocabularies, since they are less influenced by classical Arabic. However, historically they fall within the same dialect classifications as the varieties that are spoken in countries where Arabic is the dominant language. Because most of these peripheral dialects are located in Muslim majority countries, they are now influenced by Classical Arabic and Modern Standard Arabic, the Arabic varieties of the Qur'an and their Arabic-speaking neighbours, respectively.

Probably the most divergent non-creole Arabic variety is Cypriot Maronite Arabic, a nearly extinct variety that has been heavily influenced by Greek, and written in Greek and Latin alphabets.

Maltese is descended from Siculo-Arabic. Its vocabulary has acquired a large number of loanwords from Sicilian, Italian and recently English, and it uses only a Latin-based alphabet. It is the only Semitic language among the official languages of the European Union.

Arabic-based pidgins (which have a limited vocabulary consisting mostly of Arabic words, but lack most Arabic morphological features) are in widespread use along the southern edge of the Sahara, and have been for a long time. In the eleventh century, the medieval geographer al-Bakri records a text in an Arabic-based pidgin, probably one that was spoken in the region corresponding to modern Mauritania. In some regions, particularly around the southern Sudan, the pidgins have creolized (see the list below).

Even within countries where the official language is Arabic, different varieties of Arabic are spoken. For example, within Syria, the Arabic spoken in Homs is recognized as different from the Arabic spoken in Damascus, but both are considered to be varieties of "Levantine" Arabic. And within Morocco, the Arabic of the city of Fes is considered different from the Arabic spoken elsewhere in the country.

Another way that varieties of Arabic differ is that some are formal and others are colloquial (that is, vernacular). There are two formal varieties, or اللغة الفصحى "al-lugha(t) al-fuṣḥá", One of these, known in English as "Modern Standard Arabic" ("MSA"), is used in contexts such as writing, broadcasting, interviewing, and speechmaking. The other, Classical Arabic, is the language of the Qur'an. It is rarely used except in reciting the Qur'an or quoting older classical texts. (Arabic speakers typically do not make an explicit distinction between MSA and Classical Arabic.) Modern Standard Arabic was deliberately developed in the early part of the 19th century as a modernized version of Classical Arabic.

People often use a mixture of both colloquial and formal Arabic. For example, interviewers or speechmakers generally use MSA in asking prepared questions or making prepared remarks, then switch to a colloquial variety to add a spontaneous comment or respond to a question. The ratio of MSA to colloquial varieties depends on the speaker, the topic, and the situation—amongst other factors. Today even the least educated citizens are exposed to MSA through public education and exposure to mass media, and so tend to use elements of it in speaking to others. This is an example of what linguistics researchers call "diglossia". "See Linguistic register."
Egyptian linguist Al-Said Badawi proposed the following distinctions between the different "levels of speech" involved when speakers of Egyptian Arabic switch between vernacular and formal Arabic varieties:
Almost everyone in Egypt is able to use more than one of these levels of speech, and people often switch between them, sometimes within the same sentence. This is generally true in other Arabic-speaking countries as well.

The spoken dialects of Arabic have occasionally been written, usually in the Arabic alphabet. Vernacular Arabic was first recognized as a written language distinct from Classical Arabic in 17th century Ottoman Egypt, when the Cairo elite began to trend towards colloquial writing. A record of the Cairo vernacular of the time is found in the dictionary compiled by Yusuf al-Maghribi. More recently, many plays and poems, as well as a few other works (even translations of Plato) exist in Lebanese Arabic and Egyptian Arabic; books of poetry, at least, exist for most varieties. In Algeria, colloquial Maghrebi Arabic was taught as a separate subject under French colonization, and some textbooks exist. Mizrahi Jews throughout the Arab world who spoke Judeo-Arabic dialects rendered newspapers, letters, accounts, stories, and translations of some parts of their liturgy in the Hebrew alphabet, adding diacritics and other conventions for letters that exist in Judeo-Arabic but not Hebrew. The Latin alphabet was advocated for Lebanese Arabic by Said Aql, whose supporters published several books in his transcription. In 1944, Abdelaziz Pasha Fahmi, a member of the Academy of the Arabic Language in Egypt proposed the replacement of the Arabic alphabet with the Latin alphabet. His proposal was discussed in two sessions in the communion but was rejected, and faced strong opposition in cultural circles. Latin alphabet is used by Arabic speakers over the Internet or for sending messages via cellular phones when the Arabic alphabet is unavailable or difficult to use for technical reasons; this is also used in Modern Standard Arabic when Arabic speakers of different dialects communicate each other.

Sociolinguistics is the study of how language usage is affected by societal factors, e.g., cultural norms and contexts (see also pragmatics). The following sections examine some of the ways that modern Arab societies influence how Arabic is spoken.

The religion of Arabic speakers is sometimes involved in shaping how they speak Arabic. Of course, as is the case with other variables, religion cannot be seen in isolation. It is generally connected with the political systems in the different countries. Unlike that which is often the case in the West, religion in the Arab world is not usually seen as an individual choice. Rather, it is matter of group affiliation: one is born a Muslim (and even either Sunni or Shiite among them), Christian or Jew, and this becomes a bit like one's ethnicity. Religion as a sociolinguistic variable should be understood in this context.

Bahrain provides an excellent illustration. A major distinction can be made between the Shiite Bahraini, who are the oldest population of Bahrain, and the Sunni population that began to immigrate to Bahrain in the eighteenth century. The Sunni form a minority of the population. The ruling family of Bahrain is Sunni. The colloquial language represented on TV is almost invariably that of the Sunni population. Therefore, power, prestige and financial control are associated with the Sunni Arabs. This is having a major effect on the direction of language change in Bahrain.

The case of Iraq also illustrates how there can be significant differences in how Arabic is spoken on the basis of religion. (Note that the study referred to here was conducted before the Iraq War.) In Baghdad, there are significant linguistic differences between Arabic Christian and Muslim inhabitants of the city. The Christians of Baghdad are a well-established community, and their dialect has evolved from the sedentary vernacular of urban medieval Iraq. The typical Muslim dialect of Baghdad is a more recent arrival in the city and comes from Bedouin speech instead. In Baghdad, as elsewhere in the Arab world, the various communities share MSA as a prestige dialect, but the Muslim colloquial dialect is associated with power and money, given that that community is the more dominant. Therefore, the Christian population of the city learns to use the Muslim dialect in more formal situations, for example, when a Christian school teacher is trying to call students in the class to order.

A basic distinction that cuts across the entire geography of the Arabic-speaking world is between sedentary and nomadic varieties (often misleadingly called Bedouin). The distinction stems from the settlement patterns in the wake of the Arab conquests. As regions were conquered, army camps were set up that eventually grew into cities, and settlement of the rural areas by nomadic Arabs gradually followed thereafter. In some areas, sedentary dialects are divided further into urban and rural variants.

The most obvious phonetic difference between the two groups is the pronunciation of the letter ق "qaf", which is pronounced as a voiced in the Urban varieties of the Arabian Peninsula (like the Hejazi dialect in the ancient urban cities of Mecca and Medina) as well as in the Bedouin dialects across all Arabic-Speaking Countries, but is voiceless mainly in the post-Arabized Urban centers as either (with being an allophone in few words mostly in North African cities) or (merging with ) in the urban centers of Egypt and the Levant, all of which were mostly Arabized after the Islamic Conquests.

The other major phonetic difference is that the rural varieties preserve the Classical Arabic (CA) interdentals ث and ذ, and merge the CA emphatic sounds ض and ظ into rather than sedentary.

The most significant differences between rural Arabic and non-rural Arabic are in syntax. The sedentary varieties in particular share a number of common innovations from CA. This has led to the suggestion, first articulated by Charles Ferguson, that a simplified koiné language developed in the army staging camps in Iraq, from whence the remaining parts of the modern Arab world were conquered.

In general the rural varieties are more conservative than the sedentary varieties and the rural varieties within the Arabian peninsula are even more conservative than those elsewhere. Within the sedentary varieties, the western varieties (particularly, Moroccan Arabic) are less conservative than the eastern varieties.

A number of cities in the Arabic world speak a "Bedouin" variety, which acquires prestige in that context.

When it comes to phonetics the Arabic dialects differ in the pronunciation of the short vowels (, and ) and a number of selected consonants, mainly, and the interdental consonants, and, in addition to the dental.

Emphasis spreading is a phenomenon where is backed to in the vicinity of emphatic consonants. The domain of emphasis spreading is potentially unbounded; in Egyptian Arabic, the entire word is usually affected, although in Levantine Arabic and some other varieties, it is blocked by or (and sometimes ). It is associated with a concomitant decrease in the amount of pharyngealization of emphatic consonants, so that in some dialects emphasis spreading is the only way to distinguish emphatic consonants from their plain counterparts. It also pharyngealizes consonants between the source consonant and affected vowels, although the effects are much less noticeable than for vowels.
Emphasis spreading does "not" affect the affrication of non-emphatic in Moroccan Arabic, with the result that these two phonemes are always distinguishable regardless of the nearby presence of other emphatic phonemes.

The main dialectal variations in Arabic consonants revolve around the six consonants;,,,, and.

Classical Arabic varies widely from a dialect to another with, and being the most common:
Classical Arabic (Modern Standard ) varies widely from a dialect to another with, and being the most common:Classical interdental consonants and become or in some words in Egypt, Sudan, most of the Levant, parts of the Arabian peninsula (urban Hejaz and parts of Yemen). In Morocco, Algeria and other parts of North Africa they are consonantly, but remain and in most of the Arabian Peninsula, Iraq, Tunisia, parts of Yemen, rural Palestinian, Eastern Libyan, and some rural Algerian dialects. In Arabic-speaking towns of Eastern Turkey, (Urfa, Siirt and Mardin) they respectively become.
Northern varieties are influenced by the Aramaic language.

Central varieties are influenced by the Coptic language and spoken in Nubia.

Western varieties are influenced by the Berber languages, Punic or Phoenician and by Romance languages.

Southern Varieties are slightly influenced by Persian and other South Asian languagesJewish varieties are influenced by the Hebrew and Aramaic languages.


When do silk worms form cocoons?

When the worms have grown enough, they are put in baskets. From there, they will spin their cocoons in five days and will produce about three hundreds meters of silk each. The cocoons are then put in sunlight to avoid them undergoing their metamorphosis into mature moths. However, 20% of them reach the breeding process and the female moths will lay and hatch its eggs within nine to twelve days.
The cocoons are soaked in hot water in order to soften the sericin (also known as silk gum) which coat the fibres and stick the cocoons together. Silk threads are then unwound and reeled together to produce a single thread. Weavers at Angkor Silk Farm make both raw silk and fine silk that do not have the same texture at all. Sericin has not been completely removed from raw silk threads, which will give a rougher texture to the fabric at the end.

Artisans Angkor

Artisans Angkor is a Cambodian social business creating job opportunities for young people in rural areas, while reviving traditional Khmer craftsmanship (stone and wood carving, painting on statues and on silk, lacquering, and silver plating).

The organisation, founded in 1992, is located on Stung Thmey Street, 2 minutes walk from the Old Market in Siem Reap centre, Cambodia.

Two sites are open to the public in Siem Reap: one specializing in crafts located on Stung Thmey Street and the other specializing in silk at the Angkor Silk Farm (20mins drive from Siem Reap centre, in Puok district). Seven shops selling handmade items made by Artisans Angkor can be found in Siem Reap centre, at the Angkor Silk Farm, at the Angkor Café in front of Angkor Wat temple, in Phnom Penh city centre and in Siem Reap and Phnom Penh International Airport as well.

Artisans Angkor is a semi-public company whose story started in 1992 with an educational project called "Les Chantiers-Ecoles de Formation Professionnelle" (CEFP) implemented by the Cambodian Ministry of Education. This project aimed at rebuilding the country after the war period by training young people in the building sector, such as masonry, plumbing, tiling, painting, etc. Hence, "Les Chantiers-Ecoles de Formation Professionnelle" developed an educational methodology to provide those skills to underprivileged young Cambodians with little education.

In the mid-1990s, this training was extended to traditional Khmer craftsmanship, as this essential part of the Khmer cultural heritage had almost disappeared. At the end of the training, there were many employment opportunities for the young people trained in the building sector but as the tourism was not yet well-developed in Cambodia at that time, it was more difficult to find a job in the field of handicrafts.

A European program called "REPLIC" provided financial support between 1998 and 2001 to create a project called "Artisans Angkor" to be a workplace for the young Cambodians trained by CEFP in the handicraft sector. In 2003, with support of the Agence Française de Développement (French Agency for Development), Artisans Angkor became an autonomous and semi-public Cambodian company. The profits of the company are wholly reinvested in the new training programs or construction of new workplaces in the Siem Reap province.

The company has developed its own training program (independent from the CEFP) in the craft sector, giving young Cambodians aged from 18 to 25 years free vocational training in stone or wood carving, or lacquering, or silver plating. Young people mostly from remote rural areas close to a new workshop built by Artisans Angkor can apply for this training; they have to pass some of manual and motivational tests. The compensated training period lasts from 6 to 9 months and at the end of this apprenticeship, the trainees are granted the status of "artisans". If they wish, they can then join Artisans Angkor where an employment opportunity is guaranteed to them.
In 2013, Artisans Angkor employs more than 1300 people, of whom 900 are craftsmen and women working in 48 different workshops in the Siem Reap Province. The company provides a higher salary than the average wages in the sector and provides its employees with medical insurance and other benefits.

Artisans Angkor is known as one of the finest silk producers in Cambodia. The company has 23 silk workshops in the Siem Reap province. One site only is open to the public: the Angkor Silk Farm in Puok district (about 20-minute drive from the centre of Siem Reap). Artisans specializing in silk are still trained by a unit of the CEFP called the “National Silk Centre” where the Angkor Silk Farm is located.

Silk weaving is a tradition that traces its origins back to the 13th century, as a result of the influence of the Silk Road in South Asia. It became an exclusive vocation for the women of rural villages who produced among others, one of the most famous Cambodian fabrics called “Hol Lboeuk” thanks to the traditional technique of “Ikat”. Artisans Angkor revives this ancient technique in Cambodia in its very traditional way.

Angkor Silk Farm is a site gathering many silk workshops belonging to the Cambodian social enterprise Artisans Angkor. Visitors can discover through free guided tours the complete process of sericulture, from the cultivation of the mulberry bushes to the production of silk goods.

Angkor Silk Farm is located in Puok District, a 20-minute drive from Siem Reap centre, Cambodia.

Angkor Silk Farm was created by the National Silk Centre (Centre National de la Soie - CNS) in 1993. Between 1994 and 1996, the National Silk Centre developed and grew bigger.

While the National Silk Centre has focused on training silk farming to young Cambodian from remote rural areas, Artisans Angkor has provided these trainees with employment at the end of their formation. Indeed, there were few opportunities in this sector in the mid-1990s and Artisans Angkor was founded to become a vocational organism for people trained by the National Silk Centre. Therefore, CNS hosts Artisans Angkor at Angkor Silk Farm and both work closely together.

Since its creation, Artisans Angkor has opened 23 silk workshops in Siem Reap province which makes it the largest employer of the region. Besides fulfilling a social mission, the enterprise is renowned as one of the finest silk producers in Cambodia and Angkor Silk Farm has been one of the great attractions of Siem Reap for visitors eager to discover the secrets of handmade silk production.

Angkor Silk Farm is surrounded by 5 hectares of mulberry trees plantation. These fields are the starting point of the whole process of silk-making as silk worms will eat and grow on them. The trees can grow two meters tall and branches are cut four times a year. Mulberry leaves are silkworms' favourite food and will be eaten for weeks. During the last days, silkworms can eat ten times a day.

The silk is then dyed by putting natural materials or artificial and environmentally friendly dyes in boiling water. Natural dyes can be created out of bananas, coconut barks, leaves, roots, etc. but fruits and trees don't always have the same hues depending on the seasons which make the use of artificial products necessary to reach the same colour. The dyeing process has to be renewed several times as artisans weave silk fabrics in the old way through the Ikat technique.

The Ikat technique (also called "chong kiet" in Khmer) is one of the most ancient weaving techniques in the world and is used to create designs in fabrics. Artisans create a tight knot resistant to dyes which forms an original pattern with the complex intertwining of the warp thread and the weft thread.

One of the most famous and gorgeous kind of silk fabrics in Cambodia is called "Hol Lboeuk" and can only be created with the Ikat technique. Successive tying-in and dyeing process with different colours will yield the fabric geometric or floral motifs.

The threads are then tied-up to a frame. The warp chain will individually pass through dents of the reed to be rolled up again on the cylinder placed in front of the loom. In the meantime, the weaver alternately pedal up and down on the levers to overhang the frame, and to provide the route for the shuttle that carries the weft threads to move from right to left. After each passage of the shuttle, the reed will join and tighten the threads together to make the full fabric. This lengthy and time-consuming process creates the desired pattern.

Artisans Angkor had set up as a training centre in order to bring back ancient Arts and Crafts of the Angkor region. Stone and wood carvings are the skills which are mostly renowned in the Siem Reap region as they recall the nearby pagodas and Angkor temples with their famous bas-relief carvings. Most temples in the region of Angkor that were built in the 11th-12th centuries have such carvings. Statues often represent famous characters of the Buddhism or Hinduism mythologies such as Buddha, Shiva and Vishnu, etc.

For every craft, each artisan has its own way of working. If his/her movement is gentle rather than firm, the final piece will turn out to be slightly different from the other ones, which makes of each craft work a unique piece.

Artisans Angkor also masters the arts of polychrome and lacquering which have different processes depending on the medium used as a basis (wood or stone). Lacquerware and polychrome products are often gilded with copper or golden leaves.

Silver plating had practically disappeared from Cambodia for a few centuries. Artisans Angkor decided in the mid-2000s to extend its skills to this handicraft. To make a silver-plated box, artisans shape upper and lower parts from pieces of thick copper. The upper part is cut following a matrix and is then pounded until it gets the required design. Same process applies for the lower part and the two pieces must fit perfectly together to create a box, which is then carved and decorated. Finally, the item is dipped into a silver bath which gives its shininess and silver aspect.

The Authority for the Protection and Management of Angkor and the Region of Siem Reap (also called "APSARA Authority") mandated Artisans Angkor to restore several parts of the historical Angkor site under the supervision of archeologists.

Talented artisans had to reproduce some parts of Kbal Spean's missing bas-relief carvings as well as the famous heads of Devas (gods) and Asuras (demons) located at the entrance of Angkor Thom South Gate. These are important characters of the popular legend of the Churning of the Ocean of Milk. Artisans Angkor also reproduced and installed three sandstone lions on the Terrace of the Elephants located in Angkor Thom.

This work contributes to the preservation of the World Heritage Site of Angkor which is visited by an increasing number of tourists – around two millions annually. This mass tourism is a threat to the temples foundations and reproducing some parts of the site is a way of preserving the original pieces.

Artisans Angkor won a few Awards of Excellence for Handicrafts in South and South-east Asia attributed by UNESCO as a stamp of approval which certifies that a handicraft product or product line "meets high standards of quality, innovating, cultural authenticity, as well as social and environmentally responsible production".

In 2005, the UNESCO-AHPADA (Asean Handicraft Promotion and Development Association) Seals of Excellence were awarded to the "Deluxe Chorebap Scarf" and the Salad Bowl "Josa" produced by Artisans Angkor.

In 2006, the UNESCO Seal of Excellence for handicrafts (South-east Asia program) was attributed to the "Silk Sunset Shawl" and the wooden "Natural plate" made by Artisans Angkor.

In 2008, the expert panel from UNESCO awarded two items made by Artisans Angkor, the wooden "Candle Holder" and the "Krama PicnicTray", with the "Seal of Excellence for Handicrafts".

More recently in 2012, two new silk creations handmade by Artisans Angkor were awarded: the "Elephant" cushion cover and the "Jungle Chic" cushion cover.

A few months earlier, in August 2012, Artisans Angkor became a member of World Crafts Council (WCC) which is a non-governmental organization affiliated to UNESCO in a consultative status. With that participation, Artisans Angkor joins other craft organisations to promote and maintain craftsmanship traditions and legacies all over the world.

Silk moths lay eggs on specially prepared paper. The eggs hatch and the caterpillars (silkworms) are fed fresh mulberry leaves. After about 35 days and 4 moltings, the caterpillars are 10,000 times heavier than when hatched and are ready to begin spinning a cocoon. A straw frame is placed over the tray of caterpillars, and each caterpillar begins spinning a cocoon by moving its head in a pattern. Two glands produce liquid silk and force it through openings in the head called spinnerets. Liquid silk is coated in sericin, a water-soluble protective gum, and solidifies on contact with the air. Within 2–3 days, the caterpillar spins about 1 mile of filament and is completely encased in a cocoon. The silk farmers then heat the cocoons to kill them, leaving some to metamorphose into moths to breed the next generation of caterpillars. Harvested cocoons are then soaked in boiling water to soften the sericin holding the silk fibers together in a cocoon shape. The fibers are then unwound to produce a continuous thread. Since a single thread is too fine and fragile for commercial use, anywhere from three to ten strands are spun together to form a single thread of silk.

Silk

Silk is a natural protein fiber, some forms of which can be woven into textiles. The protein fiber of silk is composed mainly of fibroin and is produced by certain insect larvae to form cocoons. The best-known silk is obtained from the cocoons of the larvae of the mulberry silkworm "Bombyx mori" reared in captivity (sericulture). The shimmering appearance of silk is due to the triangular prism-like structure of the silk fibre, which allows silk cloth to refract incoming light at different angles, thus producing different colors.

Silk is produced by several insects, like silk worms but generally only the silk of moth caterpillars has been used for textile manufacturing. There has been some research into other types of silk, which differ at the molecular level. Silk is mainly produced by the larvae of insects undergoing complete metamorphosis, but some insects such as webspinners and raspy crickets produce silk throughout their lives. Silk production also occurs in Hymenoptera (bees, wasps, and ants), silverfish, mayflies, thrips, leafhoppers, beetles, lacewings, fleas, flies, and midges. Other types of arthropod produce silk, most notably various arachnids such as spiders.

The word silk comes from, from, "silken", ultimately from an Asian source — compare Mandarin "silk", Manchurian, Mongolian.

Several kinds of wild silk, which are produced by caterpillars other than the mulberry silkworm, have been known and used in China, South Asia, and Europe since ancient times. However, the scale of production was always far smaller than for cultivated silks. There are several reasons for this: first, they differ from the domesticated varieties in colour and texture and are therefore less uniform; second, cocoons gathered in the wild have usually had the pupa emerge from them before being discovered so the silk thread that makes up the cocoon has been torn into shorter lengths; and third, many wild cocoons are covered in a mineral layer that prevents attempts to reel from them long strands of silk. Thus, the only way to obtain silk suitable for spinning into textiles in areas where commercial silks are not cultivated was by tedious and labor-intensive carding.

Commercial silks originate from reared silkworm pupae, which are bred to produce a white-colored silk thread with no mineral on the surface. The pupae are killed by either dipping them in boiling water before the adult moths emerge or by piercing them with a needle. These factors all contribute to the ability of the whole cocoon to be unravelled as one continuous thread, permitting a much stronger cloth to be woven from the silk.
Wild silks also tend to be more difficult to dye than silk from the cultivated silkworm. A technique known as demineralizing allows the mineral layer around the cocoon of wild silk moths to be removed, leaving only variability in color as a barrier to creating a commercial silk industry based on wild silks in the parts of the world where wild silk moths thrive, such as in Africa and South America.

Silk was first developed in ancient China.

The earliest example of silk has been found in tombs at the neolithic site Jiahu in Henan, and dates back 8,500 years. Silk fabric from 3630 BC was used as wrapping for the body of a child from a Yangshao culture site in Qingtaicun at Xingyang, Henan.

Legend gives credit for developing silk to a Chinese empress, Leizu (Hsi-Ling-Shih, Lei-Tzu). Silks were originally reserved for the Emperors of China for their own use and gifts to others, but spread gradually through Chinese culture and trade both geographically and socially, and then to many regions of Asia. Because of its texture and lustre, silk rapidly became a popular luxury fabric in the many areas accessible to Chinese merchants. Silk was in great demand, and became a staple of pre-industrial international trade. In July 2007, archaeologists discovered intricately woven and dyed silk textiles in a tomb in Jiangxi province, dated to the Eastern Zhou Dynasty roughly 2,500 years ago. Although historians have suspected a long history of a formative textile industry in ancient China, this find of silk textiles employing "complicated techniques" of weaving and dyeing provides direct evidence for silks dating before the Mawangdui-discovery and other silks dating to the Han Dynasty (202 BC-220 AD).

Silk is described in a chapter on mulberry planting by Si Shengzhi of the Western Han (206 BC – 9 AD). There is a surviving calendar for silk production in an Eastern Han (25–220 AD) document. The two other known works on silk from the Han period are lost. The first evidence of the long distance silk trade is the finding of silk in the hair of an Egyptian mummy of the 21st dynasty, c.1070 BC. The silk trade reached as far as the Indian subcontinent, the Middle East, Europe, and North Africa. This trade was so extensive that the major set of trade routes between Europe and Asia came to be known as the Silk Road.

The Emperors of China strove to keep knowledge of sericulture secret to maintain the Chinese monopoly. Nonetheless sericulture reached Korea with technological aid from China around 200 BC, the ancient Kingdom of Khotan by AD 50, and India by AD 140.

In the ancient era, silk from China was the most lucrative and sought-after luxury item traded across the Eurasian continent, and many civilizations, such as the ancient Persians, benefited economically from trade.

Silk has a long history in India. It is known as "Resham" in eastern and north India, and "Pattu" in southern parts of India. Recent archaeological discoveries in Harappa and Chanhu-daro suggest that sericulture, employing wild silk threads from native silkworm species, existed in South Asia during the time of the Indus Valley Civilization (now in Pakistan) dating between 2450 BC and 2000 BC, while "hard and fast evidence" for silk production in China dates back to around 2570 BC. Shelagh Vainker, a silk expert at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, who sees evidence for silk production in China "significantly earlier" than 2500–2000 BC, suggests, "people of the Indus civilization either harvested silkworm cocoons or traded with people who did, and that they knew a considerable amount about silk."

India is the second largest producer of silk in the world after China. About 97% of the raw mulberry silk comes from six Indian states, namely, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Jammu and Kashmir, Tamil Nadu, Bihar and West Bengal. North Bangalore, the upcoming site of a $20 million "Silk City" Ramanagara and Mysore, contribute to a majority of silk production in Karnataka.
In Tamil Nadu, mulberry cultivation is concentrated in the Coimbatore, Erode, Bhagalpuri, Tiruppur, Salem and Dharmapuri districts. Hyderabad, Andhra Pradesh, and Gobichettipalayam, Tamil Nadu, were the first locations to have automated silk reeling units in India.

India is also the largest consumer of silk in the world. The tradition of wearing silk sarees for marriages and other auspicious ceremonies is a custom in Assam and southern parts of India. Silk is considered to be a symbol of royalty, and, historically, silk was used primarily by the upper classes. Silk garments and sarees produced in Kanchipuram, Pochampally, Dharmavaram, Mysore, Arani in the south, Banaras in the north, Bhagalpur and Murshidabad in the east are well recognized. In the northeastern state of Assam, three different types of silk are produced, collectively called Assam silk: Muga, Eri and Pat silk. Muga, the golden silk, and Eri are produced by silkworms that are native only to Assam.

Silk is produced year-round in Thailand by two types of silkworms, the cultured Bombycidae and wild Saturniidae. Most production is after the rice harvest in the southern and northeastern parts of the country. Women traditionally weave silk on hand looms and pass the skill on to their daughters, as weaving is considered to be a sign of maturity and eligibility for marriage. Thai silk textiles often use complicated patterns in various colours and styles. Most regions of Thailand have their own typical silks. A single thread filament is too thin to use on its own so women combine many threads to produce a thicker, usable fiber. They do this by hand-reeling the threads onto a wooden spindle to produce a uniform strand of raw silk. The process takes around 40 hours to produce a half kilogram of silk. Many local operations use a reeling machine for this task, but some silk threads are still hand-reeled. The difference is that hand-reeled threads produce three grades of silk: two fine grades that are ideal for lightweight fabrics, and a thick grade for heavier material.

The silk fabric is soaked in extremely cold water and bleached before dyeing to remove the natural yellow coloring of Thai silk yarn. To do this, skeins of silk thread are immersed in large tubs of hydrogen peroxide. Once washed and dried, the silk is woven on a traditional hand-operated loom.

The Rajshahi Division of northern Bangladesh is the hub of the country's silk industry. There are three types of silk produced in the region: mulberry, endi and tassar. Bengali silk was a major item of international trade for centuries. It was known as Ganges silk in medieval Europe. Bengal was the leading exporter of silk between the 16th and 19th centuries.

In the "Odyssey", 19.233, when Odysseus, while pretending to be someone else, is questioned by Penelope about her husband's clothing, he says that he wore a shirt "gleaming like the skin of a dried onion" (varies with translations, literal translation here) which could refer to the lustrous quality of silk fabric.
Aristotle wrote of "Coa vestis", a wild silk textile from Kos.
Sea silk from certain large sea shells was also valued.
The Roman Empire knew of and traded in silk, and Chinese silk was the most highly priced luxury good imported by them. During the reign of emperor Tiberius, sumptuary laws were passed that forbade men from wearing silk garments, but these proved ineffectual. The Historia Augusta mentions that the 3rd Century AD emperor Elagabalus was the first Roman to wear garments of pure silk, whereas it had been customary to wear fabrics of silk/cotton or silk/linen blends. Despite the popularity of silk, the secret of silk-making only reached Europe around AD 550, via the Byzantine Empire. Legend has it that monks working for the emperor Justinian I smuggled silkworm eggs to Constantinople in hollow canes from China. All top-quality looms and weavers were located inside the Great Palace complex in Constantinople, and the cloth produced was used in imperial robes or in diplomacy, as gifts to foreign dignitaries. The remainder was sold at very high prices.

In the Torah, a scarlet cloth item called in Hebrew "sheni tola'at" שני תולעת – literally "crimson of the worm" – is described as being used in purification ceremonies, such as those following a leprosy outbreak (Leviticus 14), alongside cedar wood and hyssop (za'atar). Eminent scholar and leading medieval translator of Jewish sources and books of the Bible into Arabic, Rabbi Saadia Gaon, translates this phrase explicitly as "crimson silk" – חריר קרמז حرير قرمز.

In Islamic teachings, Muslim men are forbidden to wear silk. Many religious jurists believe the reasoning behind the prohibition lies in avoiding clothing for men that can be considered feminine or extravagant. There are disputes regarding the amount of silk a fabric can consist of (e.g., whether a small decorative silk piece on a cotton caftan is permissible or not) for it to be lawful for men to wear, but the dominant opinion of most Muslim scholars is that the wearing of silk by men is forbidden. Modern attire has raised a number of issues, including, for instance, the permissibility of wearing silk neckties, which are masculine articles of clothing.

Despite injunctions against silk for men, silk has retained its popularity in the Islamic world because of its permissibility for women, and due to the presence of non-Muslim communities. The Muslim Moors brought silk with them to Spain during their conquest of the Iberian Peninsula.

Italy was the most important producer of silk during the Medieval age. The first center to introduce silk production to Italy was the city of Catanzaro during the 11th century in the region of Calabria. The silk of Catanzaro supplied almost all of Europe and was sold in a large market fair in the port of Reggio Calabria, to Spanish, Venetian, Genovese and Dutch merchants. Catanzaro became the lace capital of the world with a large silkworm breeding facility that produced all the laces and linens used in the Vatican. The city was world-famous for its fine fabrication of silks, velvets, damasks and brocades.

Another notable center was the Italian city-state of Lucca which largely financed itself through silk-production and silk-trading, beginning in the 12th century. Other Italian cities involved in silk production were Genoa, Venice and Florence.

The Silk Exchange in Valencia from the 15th century—where previously in 1348 also "perxal" (percale) was traded as some kind of silk—illustrates the power and wealth of one of the great Mediterranean mercantile cities.

Silk was produced in and exported from the province of Granada, Spain, especially the Alpujarras region, until the Moriscos, whose industry it was, were expelled from Granada in 1571.

Since the 15th century, silk production in France has been centered around the city of Lyon where many mechanic tools for mass production were first introduced in the 17th century.

James I attempted to establish silk production in England, purchasing and planting 100,000 mulberry trees, some on land adjacent to Hampton Court Palace, but they were of a species unsuited to the silk worms, and the attempt failed. In 1732 John Guardivaglio set up a silk throwing enterprise at Logwood mill in Stockport; in 1744, Burton Mill was erected in Macclesfield; and in 1753 Old Mill was built in Congleton. These three towns remained the centre of the English silk throwing industry until silk throwing was replaced by silk waste spinning. British enterprise also established silk filature in Cyprus in 1928. In England in the mid-20th century, raw silk was produced at Lullingstone Castle in Kent. Silkworms were raised and reeled under the direction of Zoe Lady Hart Dyke, later moving to Ayot St Lawrence in Hertfordshire in 1956.

Wild silk taken from the nests of native caterpillars was used by the Aztecs to make containers and as paper. Silkworms were introduced to Oaxaca from Spain in the 1530s and the region profited from silk production until the early 17th century, when the king of Spain banned export to protect Spain's silk industry. Silk production for local consumption has continued until the present day, sometimes spinning wild silk.

King James I introduced silk-growing to the British colonies in America around 1619, ostensibly to discourage tobacco planting. The Shakers in Kentucky adopted the practice.

The history of industrial silk in the United States is largely tied to several smaller urban centers in the Northeast region. Beginning in the 1830s, Manchester, Connecticut emerged as the early center of the silk industry in America, when the Cheney Brothers became the first in the United States to properly raise silkworms on an industrial scale; today the Cheney Brothers Historic District showcases their former mills. With the mulberry tree craze of that decade, other smaller producers began raising silkworms. This economy particularly gained traction in the vicinity of Northampton, Massachusetts and its neighboring Williamsburg, where a number of small firms and cooperatives emerged. Among the most prominent of these was the cooperative utopian Northampton Association for Education and Industry, of which Sojourner Truth was a member. Following the destructive Mill River Flood of 1874, one manufacturer, William Skinner, relocated his mill from Williamsburg to the then-new city of Holyoke. Over the next 50 years he and his sons would maintain relations between the American silk industry and its counterparts in Japan, and expanded their business to the point that by 1911, the Skinner Mill complex contained the largest silk mill under one roof in the world, and the brand Skinner Fabrics had become the largest manufacturer of silk satins internationally. Other efforts later in the 19th century would also bring the new silk industry to Paterson, New Jersey, with several firms hiring European-born textile workers and granting it the nickname "Silk City" as another major center of production in the United States.

World War II interrupted the silk trade from Asia, and silk prices increased dramatically. U.S. industry began to look for substitutes, which led to the use of synthetics such as nylon. Synthetic silks have also been made from lyocell, a type of cellulose fiber, and are often difficult to distinguish from real silk (see spider silk for more on synthetic silks).

In Terengganu, which is now part of Malaysia, a second generation of silkworm was being imported as early as 1764 for the country's silk textile industry, especially songket. However, since the 1980s, Malaysia is no longer engaged in sericulture but does plant mulberry trees.

In Vietnamese legend, silk appeared in the sixth dynasty of Hùng Vương.

The process of silk production is known as sericulture. The entire production process of silk can be divided into several steps which are typically handled by different entities. Extracting raw silk starts by cultivating the silkworms on mulberry leaves. Once the worms start pupating in their cocoons, these are dissolved in boiling water in order for individual long fibres to be extracted and fed into the spinning reel.

To produce 1 kg of silk, 104 kg of mulberry leaves must be eaten by 3000 silkworms. It takes about 5000 silkworms to make a pure silk kimono. The major silk producers are China (54%) and India (14%). Other statistics:

The environmental impact of silk production is potentially large when compared with other natural fibers. A life cycle assessment of Indian silk production shows that the production process has a large carbon and water footprint, mainly due to the fact that it is an animal-derived fiber and more inputs such as fertilizer and water are needed per unit of fiber produced.

Silk fibers from the "Bombyx mori" silkworm have a triangular cross section with rounded corners, 5–10 μm wide. The fibroin-heavy chain is composed mostly of beta-sheets, due to a 59-mer amino acid repeat sequence with some variations. The flat surfaces of the fibrils reflect light at many angles, giving silk a natural sheen. The cross-section from other silkworms can vary in shape and diameter: crescent-like for "Anaphe" and elongated wedge for "tussah". Silkworm fibers are naturally extruded from two silkworm glands as a pair of primary filaments (brin), which are stuck together, with sericin proteins that act like glue, to form a bave. Bave diameters for tussah silk can reach 65 μm. See cited reference for cross-sectional SEM photographs.

Silk has a smooth, soft texture that is not slippery, unlike many synthetic fibers.

Silk is one of the strongest natural fibers, but it loses up to 20% of its strength when wet. It has a good moisture regain of 11%. Its elasticity is moderate to poor: if elongated even a small amount, it remains stretched. It can be weakened if exposed to too much sunlight. It may also be attacked by insects, especially if left dirty.

One example of the durable nature of silk over other fabrics is demonstrated by the recovery in 1840 of silk garments from a wreck of 1782: 'The most durable article found has been silk; for besides pieces of cloaks and lace, a pair of black satin breeches, and a large satin waistcoat with flaps, were got up, of which the silk was perfect, but the lining entirely gone... from the thread giving way... No articles of dress of woollen cloth have yet been found.'

Silk is a poor conductor of electricity and thus susceptible to static cling. Silk has a high emissivity for infrared light, making it feel cool to the touch.

Unwashed silk chiffon may shrink up to 8% due to a relaxation of the fiber macrostructure, so silk should either be washed prior to garment construction, or dry cleaned. Dry cleaning may still shrink the chiffon up to 4%. Occasionally, this shrinkage can be reversed by a gentle steaming with a press cloth. There is almost no gradual shrinkage nor shrinkage due to molecular-level deformation.

Natural and synthetic silk is known to manifest piezoelectric properties in proteins, probably due to its molecular structure.

Silkworm silk was used as the standard for the denier, a measurement of linear density in fibers. Silkworm silk therefore has a linear density of approximately 1 den, or 1.1 dtex.
Silk emitted by the silkworm consists of two main proteins, sericin and fibroin, fibroin being the structural center of the silk, and serecin being the sticky material surrounding it. Fibroin is made up of the amino acids Gly-Ser-Gly-Ala-Gly-Ala and forms beta pleated sheets. Hydrogen bonds form between chains, and side chains form above and below the plane of the hydrogen bond network.

The high proportion (50%) of glycine allows tight packing. This is because glycine's R group is only a hydrogen and so is not as sterically constrained. The addition of alanine and serine makes the fibres strong and resistant to breaking. This tensile strength is due to the many interceded hydrogen bonds, and when stretched the force is applied to these numerous bonds and they do not break.

Silk is resistant to most mineral acids, except for sulfuric acid, which dissolves it. It is yellowed by perspiration. Chlorine bleach will also destroy silk fabrics.

RSF is produced by chemically dissolving silkworm cocoons, leaving their molecular structure intact. The silk fibers dissolve into tiny thread-like structures known as microfibrils. The resulting solution is extruded through a small opening, causing the microfibrils to reassemble into a single fiber. The resulting material is reportedly twice as stiff as silk.

Silk's absorbency makes it comfortable to wear in warm weather and while active. Its low conductivity keeps warm air close to the skin during cold weather. It is often used for clothing such as shirts, ties, blouses, formal dresses, high fashion clothes, lining, lingerie, pajamas, robes, dress suits, sun dresses and Eastern folk costumes. For practical use, silk is excellent as clothing that protects from many biting insects that would ordinarily pierce clothing, such as mosquitoes and horseflies.

Fabrics that are often made from silk include charmeuse, habutai, chiffon, taffeta, crepe de chine, dupioni, noil, tussah, and shantung, among others.

Silk's attractive lustre and drape makes it suitable for many furnishing applications. It is used for upholstery, wall coverings, window treatments (if blended with another fiber), rugs, bedding and wall hangings.

Silk had many industrial and commercial uses, such as in parachutes, bicycle tires, comforter filling and artillery gunpowder bags.

A special manufacturing process removes the outer sericin coating of the silk, which makes it suitable as non-absorbable surgical sutures. This process has also recently led to the introduction of specialist silk underclothing, which has been used for skin conditions including eczema. New uses and manufacturing techniques have been found for silk for making everything from disposable cups to drug delivery systems and holograms.

Silk has been considered as a luxurious textile since 3630 BC. However, it started to serve also as a biomedical material for suture in surgeries decades ago. In the past 30 years, it has been widely studied and used as a biomaterial, which refers to materials used for medical applications in organisms, due to its excellent properties, including remarkable mechanical properties, comparative biocompatibility, tunable degradation rates "in vitro" and "in vivo", the ease to load cellular growth factors (for example, BMP-2), and the ability to be processed into several other formats such as films, gels, particles, and scaffolds. Silks from "Bombyx mori", a kind of cultivated silkworm, are the most widely investigated silks.

Silks derived from "Bombyx mori" are generally made of two parts: the silk fibroin fiber which contains a light chain of 25kDa and a heavy chain of 350kDa (or 390kDa) linked by a single disulfide bond and a glue-like protein, sericin, comprising 25 to 30 percentage by weight. Silk fibroin contains hydrophobic beta sheet blocks, interrupted by small hydrophilic groups. And the beta-sheets contribute much to the high mechanical strength of silk fibers, which achieves 740 MPa, tens of times that of poly(lactic acid) and hundreds of times that of collagen. This impressive mechanical strength has made silk fibroin very competitive for applications in biomaterials. Indeed, silk fibers have found their way into tendon tissue engineering, where mechanical properties matter greatly. In addition, mechanical properties of silks from various kinds of silkworms vary widely, which provides more choices for their use in tissue engineering.

Most products fabricated from regenerated silk are weak and brittle, with only ≈1–2% of the mechanical strength of native silk fibers due to the absence of appropriate secondary and hierarchical structure,
Biocompatibility, i.e., to what level the silk will cause an immune response, is a critical issue for biomaterials. The issue arose during its increasing clinical use. Wax or silicone is usually used as a coating to avoid fraying and potential immune responses when silk fibers serve as suture materials. Although the lack of detailed characterization of silk fibers, such as the extent of the removal of sericin, the surface chemical properties of coating material, and the process used, make it difficult to determine the real immune response of silk fibers in literature, it is generally believed that sericin is the major cause of immune response. Thus, the removal of sericin is an essential step to assure biocompatibility in biomaterial applications of silk. However, further research fails to prove clearly the contribution of sericin to inflammatory responses based on isolated sericin and sericin based biomaterials. In addition, silk fibroin exhibits an inflammatory response similar to that of tissue culture plastic in vitro when assessed with human mesenchymal stem cells (hMSCs) or lower than collagen and PLA when implant rat MSCs with silk fibroin films in vivo. Thus, appropriate degumming and sterilization will assure the biocompatibility of silk fibroin, which is further validated by in vivo experiments on rats and pigs. There are still concerns about the long-term safety of silk-based biomaterials in the human body in contrast to these promising results. Even though silk sutures serve well, they exist and interact within a limited period depending on the recovery of wounds (several weeks), much shorter than that in tissue engineering. Another concern arises from biodegradation because the biocompatibility of silk fibroin does not necessarily assure the biocompatibility of the decomposed products. In fact, different levels of immune responses and diseases have been triggered by the degraded products of silk fibroin.

Biodegradability (also known as biodegradation)--the ability to be disintegrated by biological approaches, including bacteria, fungi, and cells—is another significant property of biomaterials today. Biodegradable materials can minimize the pain of patients from surgeries, especially in tissue engineering, there is no need of surgery in order to remove the scaffold implanted. Wang et al. showed the in vivo degradation of silk via aqueous 3-D scaffolds implanted into Lewis rats. Enzymes are the means used to achieve degradation of silk in vitro. Protease XIV from Streptomyces griseus and α-chymotrypsin from bovine pancreases are the two popular enzymes for silk degradation. In addition, gamma-radiation, as well as cell metabolism, can also regulate the degradation of silk.

Compared with synthetic biomaterials such as polyglycolides and polylactides, silk is obviously advantageous in some aspects in biodegradation. The acidic degraded products of polyglycolides and polylactides will decrease the pH of the ambient environment and thus adversely influence the metabolism of cells, which is not an issue for silk. In addition, silk materials can retain strength over a desired period from weeks to months as needed by mediating the content of beta sheets.

Genetic modification of domesticated silkworms has been used to alter the composition of the silk. As well as possibly facilitating the production of more useful types of silk, this may allow other industrially or therapeutically useful proteins to be made by silkworms.

As the process of harvesting the silk from the cocoon kills the larvae by boiling them, sericulture has been criticized by animal welfare and rights activists. Mohandas Gandhi was critical of silk production based on the Ahimsa philosophy which led to promotion of cotton and Ahimsa silk, a type of wild silk made from the cocoons of wild and semi-wild silk moths.

Since silk cultivation kills silkworms, possibly painfully, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) urges people not to buy silk items.