The pan-Arab colors are black, white, green and red. Individually, each of the four pan-Arab colors were intended to represent a certain aspect of the Arab people and their history.Abū Khaldūn Sati' al-Husri, The days of Maysalūn: A Page from the Modern History of the Arabs, Sidney Glauser Trans. (Washington D.C.: Middle East Institute, 1966), 46.
History
The four colors derive their potency from a verse by 14th century Arab poet Safi al-Din al-Hilli: "White are our acts, black our battles, green our fields, and red our swords".Muhsin Al-Musawi, Reading Iraq: Culture and Power in Conflict (I. B. Tauris 2006), p. 63 The black is the Black Standard, which was used by the Rashidun and Abbasid Caliphate, while white was the dynastic color of the Umayyad Caliphate. The color green has symbolic significance within Islam, the primary religion among Arabs, and is often specifically associated with the prophet Muhammad. Green is also identified as the color of the Fatimid Caliphate by some modern sources, despite their dynastic color having been white. Finally, red was used as the Hashemite dynastic color.
Pan-Arab colors, used individually in the past, were first combined in 1916 in the flag of the Arab Revolt or Flag of Hejaz.I. Friedman, British Pan-Arab Policy, 1915–1922, Transaction Publ., 2011, p. 135 Many current flags are based on Arab Revolt colors, such as the flags of Jordan, Kuwait, Palestine, the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic, and the United Arab Emirates.
In the 1950s, a subset of the Pan-Arab colors, the Arab Liberation colors, came to prominence. These consist of a tricolor of red, white and black bands, with green given less prominence or not included. The Arab Liberation tricolor or the Arab Liberation Flag was mainly inspired by the Egyptian Revolution of 1952 and Egypt's official flag under president Mohamed Naguib,M. Naguib, Egypt's Destiny, 1955 which became the basis of the current flags of Egypt, Iraq, Sudan, and Yemen (and formerly in the flags of Syria, the states of North Yemen and South Yemen), and in the short-lived Arab unions of the United Arab Republic and the Federation of Arab Republics.
Flags with Pan-Arab colors Current National flags
Flags of first-level administrative divisions
Former national flags with the Pan-Arab colors
Flags of Arab political and paramilitary movements using Pan-Arab colors
See also Black Standard Islamic flags Green in Islam List of Arab flags Pan-African colors Pan-Arabism Pan-Slavic colors Tricolor
References
External links Pan-Arab colors Evolution of the Arab Flag, by Mahdi Abdul-Hadi (in Arabic)