Wikipedia
The Maghreb ( or ; literally "sunset"; , "the Arab West"; ; previously known as Barbary Coast), or the Greater Maghreb ( al-Maghrib al-Kabīr), 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as the region including the Atlas Mountains and the coastal plains of Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, and Libya, was later superseded, especially following the 1989 formation of the Arab Maghreb Union, by the inclusion of Mauritania and of the disputed territory of Western Sahara (mostly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.
Historical terms for the region or various portions of it include Mauretania, Numidia, Libya, and Africa in classical antiquity. The term maghrib is Arabic for "west", from the verb gharaba (, "to depart, withdraw"). In the strict sense, the definite form al-maghrib denotes the country of Morocco in particular. It identified the westernmost territories that fell to the Islamic conquests of the 7th century. Today, it is a proper noun for the present region of the Maghreb, also known politically as ( ‘the Arab Maghreb’) or ( "the great Maghreb"). The Berber language's alternative term for the region, Tamazgha (‘land of the Berbers’), has been popularized by Berber activists since the second half of the 20th century.
Before the establishment of modern nation states in the region during the mid-20th century, Maghreb most commonly referred to a smaller area between the Atlas Mountains in the south and the Mediterranean Sea, often also including eastern Libya, but not modern Mauritania. As recently as the late 19th century it was used to refer to the Western Mediterranean region of coastal North Africa in general, and to Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia in particular.
Partially isolated from the rest of the continent by the Atlas Mountains and the Sahara desert, inhabitants of the northern parts of the Maghreb have long had commercial and cultural ties to the inhabitants of the Mediterranean countries of Southern Europe and Western Asia, going back at least to the Phoenicians in the 1st millennium BC (the Phoenician colony of Carthage having been founded, according to tradition, in what is now Tunisia circa 800 BC).
The region was somewhat unified as an independent political entity during the rule of the Berber kingdom of Numidia, which was followed by the Roman Empire's rule or influence. That was followed by the brief invasion of the Germanic Vandals, the equally brief re-establishment of a weak Byzantine rule by the Byzantine Empire, the rule of the Islamic Caliphates under the Umayyads, the Abbasids, and the Fatimids. The most enduring rule was that of the local Berber empires of the Almoravids, Almohads, Hammadids, Zirids, Marinids, and Wattasids (to name some of those among the most prominent) from the 8th to 13th centuries. The Ottoman Turks ruled the region as well.
Mauritania, Morocco, Tunisia, Algeria, and Libya established the Maghreb Union in 1989 to promote cooperation and economic integration in a common market. It was envisioned initially by Muammar Gaddafi as a superstate. The union included Western Sahara implicitly under Morocco's membership, putting Morocco's long cold war with Algeria to a rest. However, this progress was short-lived, and the union is now frozen. Tensions between Algeria and Morocco over Western Sahara re-emerged strongly, reinforced by the unsolved borderline issue between the two countries. These two main conflicts have hindered progress on the union's joint goals and practically made it inactive as a whole. However, the instability in the region and growing cross-border security threats revived the calls for regional cooperation – foreign ministers of the Arab Maghreb Union declared a need for coordinated security policy in May 2015 during the 33rd session of the follow-up committee meeting, which brings back the hope of some form of cooperation.