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TheArabic Wikipedia (Arabic:ويكيبيديا العربية) is theModern Standard Arabic version ofWikipedia. It started on 9 July 2003. As of February 2026, it has 1,299,372 articles, 2,873,294 registered users and 56,004 files and it is the15th largest edition of Wikipedia by article count, and ranks7th in terms of depth among Wikipedias. It was the first Wikipedia in aSemitic language to exceed 100,000 articles[2] on 25 May 2009, and also the first Semitic language to exceed 1 million articles, on 17 November 2019.[3]
Arab Wikipedians meeting during Wikimania conference in Hong Kong
At the emergence of theWikipedia project in 2001, there were calls to create an Arabic domain raised by Arab engineers.[4] The domain was created as "ar.wikipedia.org" but no serious activity took place except with anonymous users who experimented with the idea.[5] Until 7 February 2003, all contributors to the Arabic Wikipedia were non-Arab volunteers from the International Project Wikipedia[6] that handled the technical aspects. Elizabeth Bauer, who used the user nameElian in the Arabic Wikipedia, approached many Arabic speakers who potentially might be interested in volunteering to spearhead the Arabic project. The only group who responded was theArabEyes team who were involved in Arabizing the Open Source initiatives. Elian's request was conservatively received and the ArabEyes team was ready to participate but not take a leadership role[7] and then declined to participate on the second of February 2003. During this negotiation time, volunteer users from theGerman Wikipedia project continued to develop the technical infrastructure of the Arabic Wikipedia backbone.[8][9]
In 2003, Rami Tarawneh (Arabic:رامي عوض الطراونة), aJordanian PhD student inGermany who originated fromZarqa, encountered theEnglish Wikipedia and began to edit content. Contributors encouraged him to start an Arabic Wikipedia.[10] The Arabic Wikipedia opened in July 2003.[11] By that year a significant group of contributors included Tarawneh and four other Jordanians studying in Germany.[10]
On 7 February 2004,[12] one member from the ArabEyes, Isam Bayazidi (Arabic:عصام بايزيدي), volunteered with four other friends to be involved with the Arabic Wikipedia and assumed some leadership roles. In 2004, Bayazid was assigned theSysOp responsibilities and he, with another 5 volunteers, namely Ayman, Abo Suleiman, Mustapha Ahmad and Bassem Jarkas[13] are considered to be the first Arabs to lead the Wikipedia project and they are attributed for working on translating and enforcing the English policies to Arabic. The Arabic Wikipedia faced many challenges at its inception. In February 2004, it was considered to be the worst Wikipedia project among all other languages. However, in 2005, it showed phenomenal progress by which in December 2005, the total number of articles reached 8,285.[14] By that time, there were fewer than 20 contributors and the administrators and contributors made efforts to recruit new users.[10]
In 2007 thesecret police in an unspecified country detained Tarawneh and demanded that he reveal theIP address of a contributor. To protect the Wikipedian, the administrators forged a dispute that was the presumed reason for Tarawneh losing his administrator access, so the secret police was unable to obtain the IP. In response to the incident, the rules now state that no one user may have access to all information about the Wikipedia's users.[10]
In 2008 the Arabic Wikipedia had fewer than 65,000 articles and was ranked No. 29 out of the Wikipedias, behind theEsperanto Wikipedia and theSlovenian Wikipedia.Noam Cohen ofThe New York Times reported that, to many of the attendees of the 2008Wikimania conference inAlexandria, Egypt, the "woeful shape of the Arabic Wikipedia has been the cause of chagrin."[15] Cohen stated that fewer than 10% of Egyptians are estimated to have internet access and of those with internet access many tend to beknowledgeable in English and have a preference of communicating in that language.[15] The Arabic Wikipedia had 118,870 articles as of 15 January 2010.
As of July 2012 there were around 630 active Arabic Wikipedia editors around the world. Ikram Al-Yacoub ofAl Arabiya said that this was "a relatively low figure."[16] At the time there were hundreds of thousands of Wikipedia articles on the Arabic Wikipedia.[10] TheWikimedia Foundation and the nonprofit group Taghreedat established the "Arabic Wikipedia Editors Program" intended to train users to edit the Arabic Wikipedia.[16] By the end of June 2014, the number of articles had reached 384,000.[17]
Iraqi volunteers have translated much of English Wikipedia into Arabic Wikipedia.[18] More recently, a project namedBayt Alhikma has translated more than 10,000 articles about science and other topics in Arabic. The number of active users in Arabic Wikipedia is increasing quickly, reaching the 10,000 mark for first time on 10 February 2021.[19]
The countries in which the Arabic Wikipedia is the most popular language version of Wikipedia are shown inteal.
AtWikimania 2008,Jimmy Wales argued that high-profile arrests like those of Egyptian bloggerKareem Amer could be hampering the development of the Arabic Wikipedia by making editors afraid to contribute.[20]
In 2010, Tarek Al Kaziri, fromRadio Netherlands Worldwide, believed that the Arabic Wikipedia reflected the Arabic reality in general. Low participation lowers the probability that the articles are reviewed, developed and updated, and political polarisation of participants is likely to lead to biases in the articles.[21]
According toAlexa Internet, on 26 November 2014, the Arabic Wikipedia was the 10th most visited language version of Wikipedia over a month, with the "ar.wikipedia.org"subdomain attracting approximately 1.8% of the total visitors of the "wikipedia.org" website,[22] despite being ranked no. 22 in terms of the article count. In terms of page views, it was ranked 11th in September 2018 with the same nine Wikipedias above it plus thePolish one.[23] Among the larger Wikipedias, it has one of the lowest ratios of new editors retention and one of the highest rates of edit reversions.[24]
Page views on the Arabic Wikipedia, breakdown by country over time.
Florence Devouard, the former president of theWikimedia Foundation, stated in 2010 that the largest number of articles on the Arabic Wikipedia were written by Egyptians and that the Egyptians were more likely to participate in the Arabic Wikipedia compared to other groups.[25]
Generally, Arabic Wikipedia, as of 2018, is the most popular language version of Wikipedia in most Arab countries, except Tunisia, Comoros, Chad, Lebanon, Qatar, Bahrain and the UAE. Arabic Wikipedia has its highest percentages in Egypt, Libya and the countries of the Levant (except Israel and Lebanon) and the Arabian peninsula.[26] This discrepancy happens because of the deficits of Wikipedia in Arabic regarding quality and quantity, while in the latter three the lead of English there is associated with the fact that most residents there are migrants from various countries, such as India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Philippines and other countries, where English is the most popular language there.[original research?]
As of December 2022, Arabic receives around to 180 to 260 million pageviews per month, depending on the season. The most pageviews are recorded in winter and spring.[27]
On 11 July 2006, the Saudi government blocked access to Wikipedia andGoogle Translate for what it said was sexual and politically sensitive content.[28][29] Google Translate was being used to bypass the filters on the blocked sites by translating them.[28][29] Though Wikipedia is not blocked currently, specific pages on Wikipedia were reported to be censored by Saudi Arabia in 2011, such as one page discussing the theory of evolution.[30][31]Encrypted connections overHTTPS starting in 2015 made censorship more difficult for these pages and as of 2017 there is no evidence that individual pages are still being blocked.[31]
In September 2020, twoWikipedia volunteer administrators were arrested on the same day:Osama Khalid was sentenced to 32 years in prison whileZiyad al-Sofiani was sentenced to eight years, according to Smex, a Lebanese NGO to advance self-regulating information societies in the Arab-speaking world, andDemocracy for the Arab World Now. A subsequent investigation by the Wikimedia Foundation identified 16 users who seemed to routinely engage inconflict-of-interest editing—reportedly including spying for the Saudi government.[32][33][34]
Access to the Arabic Wikipedia was blocked in Syria in 2008, although other language editions remained accessible.[35][36]
Bassel Khartabil (Arabic:باسل خرطبيل) was a contributor to a number of open-source projects including Wikipedia; his arrest in 2012 was likely connected to his online activity. He was executed atAdra Prison nearDamascus in 2015.[37] Several organizations, including theWikimedia Foundation, established the Bassel Khartabil Free Culture Fellowship in his honor in 2017, for an initial period of three years.[38]
The Arabic Wikipedia has been criticized for an alleged Middle Eastern-centric content bias on religious and political topics.[39][40][41][42][43] A 2014Wired article described the Arabic Wikipedia, with over 690,000 registered users and more than 240,000 articles, as being "far more than a translation of its English counterpart." Its articles often reflect a worldview shaped by the region's religious and political sensitivities, differing significantly fromWestern perspectives.Wired reported that Jordanians, upon viewing the English Wikipedia, felt it portrayed what they saw as aracist depiction of Arabs, particularly in representations of Arabs in the desert with camels, and started their own Wikipedia as a result.[39]
Variant of the Arabic Wikipedia logo with the colors of thePalestinian flag, used from October 2023, before the original version was brought back following the2025 ceasefire. It was subsequently restored after the ceasefire ended.
During theGaza war, the Arabic Wikipedia website displayed a logo in the colors of thePalestinian flag and a banner urging "an end to thegenocide", sparking criticism from theWikimedia Israel and other Israeli commentators.[44][41] The site also shut down for one day (on 23 December 2023) in solidarity withGaza. Users were unable to edit during the blackout.[45]
A June 2024 article in theJerusalem Post criticized the Arabic Wikipedia's article on the war for downplayingHamas' attacks on civilians and Iran's involvement, among other issues.[44]
In mid-2020, the Arabic Wikipedia was criticized for deleting its version of the article onSarah Hegazi after a deletion discussion that found there was a consensus the article did not meet the criteria for notability.[46] Some ArabicLGBT activists onsocial media accused the Arabic Wikipedia of bias against the LGBT community, and claim the action to be part of censorship, hate-speech, andhomophobia in the Middle East. The news websiteRaseef22 criticized Arabic Wikipedia's policies, and said that the project was controlled by prejudiced administrators who reject articles about minorities and women. The administrators of the Arabic Wikipedia said that the deletion process is a normal procedure and has nothing to do with the subject or targeting specific issues.[42][43]
^Samir, Amira (December 2009)."Le masri est-il contre l'arabe ?" [Is Masri contrary to Arabic?] (in French).Al-Ahram Hebdo. Archived fromthe original on 31 January 2014. Retrieved13 March 2010. () "« Les Egyptiens sont effectivement les plus nombreux à participer dans la Wikipedia arabe, c’est-à-dire que les statistiques montrent que le plus grand nombre d’articles dans la Wikipedia arabe sont envoyés par des Egyptiens.[...]"
