- REDIRECT
The
Maghreb ( or ;Literally "sunset"; , "the
Arab West"; ; previously known as
Barbary Coast), or the
Greater Maghreb (
al-Maghrib al-Kabir), is usually defined as much or most of the
region of western
North Africa or
Northwest Africa, west of
Egypt. The traditional definition as the region including the
Atlas Mountains and the coastal plains of
Morocco,
Algeria,
Tunisia, and
Libya, was later superseded, especially following the 1989 formation of the
Arab Maghreb Union, by the inclusion of
Mauritania and of the disputed territory of
Western Sahara (mostly controlled by Morocco). During the
Al-Andalus era in
Spain (711–1492), the Maghreb's inhabitants,
Maghrebis, were known as "
Moors"; the
Muslim areas of Spain in those times were usually included in contemporary definitions of the Maghreb—hence the use of "Moorish" or "Moors" to describe the Muslim inhabitants of Spain in Western sources.
