So Latin spread pretty well across Europe, being the basis of almost every language there, but how come it didn’t take as strong a hold in the Middle East? It’s not as if the Romans were never there, and they lingered there far longer than they did in Europe. Was it just a matter of a stronger preexisting culture, or did the Arabs have something to do with it? What happened here?
The Empire in the West basically shattered all pre-Roman forms of social organization, turning everyone into Roman citizens/subjects. This didn’t happen in the East, so they protected local language and culture from being subsumed by Greek (not Latin, as other comments have said). I’m only parroting this from when I asked the sam question so don’t ask me why this happened.