Arabization or Arabisation (, ) in its broadest terms involves the promotion of Arabic language, Arab culture and Arab people. This also refers to the process of growing Arab influence on non-Arab populations, causing a language shift by the latter's gradual adoption of Arabic and incorporation of Arab culture, after the Muslim conquest of the Middle East and North Africa, as well as the Arab nationalist policies of some governments in modern Arab states toward non-Arabic speaking minorities, including Algeria, Iraq, Kuwait, and Sudan. After the rise of Islam in the Hejaz, Arab culture and language were spread outside the Arabian Peninsula through conquest, trade and intermarriages between members of the non-Arab local population and the peninsular Arabs. Even within the Arabian Peninsula itself, Arabization occurred to non-Arab populations such as the Hutaym in the northwestern Arabia and the Solluba in the Syrian Desert and the region of Mosul. The Arabic language began to serve as a lingua franca in these areas and various dialects were formed. Yemen is traditionally held to be the homeland of the Qahtanite Arabs who, according to Arab tradition, are pure Arabs; however, most of the Yemeni population did not in fact speak Old Arabic prior to the spread of Islam, and spoke the extinct Old South Arabian languages instead. The influence of Arabic has been profound in many other countries whose cultures have been influenced by Islam. Arabic was a major source of vocabulary for various languages. This process reached its zenith between the 10th and 14th centuries, widely considered to be the high point of Arab culture. Early Arab expansion in the Near East After Alexander the Great, the Nabataean kingdom emerged and ruled a region extending from north of Arabia to the south of Syria. The Nabataeans originated from the Arabian peninsula, who came under the influence of the earlier Aramaic culture, the neighbouring Hebrew culture of the Hasmonean kingdom, as well as the Hellenistic cultures in the region (especially with the Christianization of Nabateans in the 3rd and 4th centuries). The pre-modern Arabic language was created by Nabateans, who developed the Nabataean alphabet which became the basis of modern Arabic script. The Nabataean language, under heavy Arab influence, amalgamated into the Arabic language. The Arab Ghassanids were the last major non-Islamic Semitic migration northward out of Yemen in late classic era. They were Greek Orthodox Christian, and clients of the Byzantine