<P> The term "Moors" refers primarily to the Muslim inhabitants of the Maghreb, the Iberian Peninsula, Sicily, and Malta during the Middle Ages . The Moors initially were the Berber autochthones of the Maghreb . The name was later also applied to Arabs . </P> <P> Moors are not a distinct or self - defined people, and the 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica observed that "The term' Moors' has no real ethnological value ." Medieval and early modern Europeans variously applied the name to Arabs, North African Berbers, and Muslim Europeans . </P>

When did the arab arrive to the middle east and north africa