Noisy Arabs

Something from the depths of memory - "Noisy Arabs" or "Shut-up you noisy Arabs". Phrases that I know and use but don't know from where they come.

I've never heard that one. But in the second half of the 19th century "city Arab" or "street Arab" was British slang for a homeless guttersnipe child, presumably because they were "nomads" of no fixed abode, like Bedouin. Perhaps your phrase derives from this? "Shut up you noisy guttersnipes" sounds pretty plausible to me.(VSD)

I think it would also sound plausible to the editors of the OED. Under guttershipe, after explaining that a snipe is a bird, they give, as one meaning:

"b. A child brought up 'in the gutter'; one of the lowest class; an urchin. Also attrib. and as adj.

[One example of many:] 1884 Century Mag. XXVIII. 557 The gutter-snipes and Arabs of the streets of Gravesend."