Arabic, the main unifying feature among Arabs, is a Semitic language originating in Arabia. From there it spread to a variety of distinct peoples across most of West Asia and North Africa, resulting in their acculturation as Arabs, or Arabization, often though not always, in conjunction with Islamization.With the rise of Islam in the 7th century CE as the language of the Qur'an, Arabic became the lingua franca of the wider Mediterranean region. It was in this period that Arabic language and culture was widely disseminated with the early Islamic expansion, both through conquest and cultural contact.Arabic culture and language, however, began a more limited difusion before the Islamic age, first spreading in West Asia beginning in the 2nd century, as Arab Christians such as the Ghassanids, Lakhmids and Banu Judham began migrating north from Arabia into the Syrian Desert and the Levant.