Arabic is a language spoken by more than 422 million people from the ocean to the Gulf, as the Arabs say.[7][8] This includes Morocco, Mauritania and Western Sahara in the west, and extends to Iraq, the Gulf states and Somalia in the east. The official language of 26 countries, one of the six official languages of the United Nations. It is also the sacred language of over 1.7 billion Muslims around the world,[9][10][11] and the language written by some of the greatest works of literature, science and history in the world.[12] According to the teachings of Islam, classical Arabic is the language in which God chose to speak to mankind through Muhammad in the seventh century of the Christian era.