For nearly a thousand years before the spread of the Arab-Muslim conquests in the 7th century AD, Aramaic was the lingua franca and main spoken language in the Fertile Crescent.[6] Among the Maronites, traditionally, Western Aramaic had been the spoken language up to the 17th century, when Arabic took its place, while classical Syriac remained in use only for liturgical purposes, as a sacred language (also considered as such in Judaism, alongside Hebrew).