Beja people

File:SAAES-Beja12thdynasty.png ancient Egyptian tomb]]

The Beja are traditionally Cushitic-speaking pastoral nomads native to northeast Africa, referred to as Blemmyes in ancient texts. The geographer Abu Nasr Mutahhar al-Maqdisi wrote in the tenth century that the Beja were at that time Christians.{{cite web |last1=Ruffini |first1=Giovanni |title=Abu Nasr Mutahhar al-Maqdisi |url=http://www.medievalnubia.info/dev/index.php/Abu_Nasr_Mutahhar_al-Maqdisi |website=Medieval Nubia: A Source Book |access-date=19 June 2018}} Beja territories in the Eastern desert were conquered and vassalised by the Kingdom of Aksum in the third century.{{cite web |last1=Hatke |first1=George |title=Aksum and Nubia: Warfare, Commerce, and Political Fictions in Ancient Northeast Africa |url=http://dlib.nyu.edu/awdl/isaw/hatke2013-aksum-and-nubia/ |website=Institute for the Study of the Ancient World |publisher=New York University |access-date=19 June 2019}} The historian Al-Yaqubi documented five Beja Kingdoms in the 9th century. Originally, the Beja did not speak Arabic, however the migration of the numerous Arab tribes of Juhaynah, Mudar, Rabi'a, and many more to the Beja areas contributed to the Arabization and Islamization of them, however the Arabs did not fully settle in the Beja areas as they looked for better climate in other areas. The Beja have partially mixed with Arabs through intermarriages over the centuries, and by the 15th century, the Beja were Islamized. The Balaw of the southern Red Sea coast may have come from the mixing of people from the Arab Peninsula and Beja people, but there has been significant historical dispute on this matter.{{cite book |last1=Paul |first1=Andrew |title=A History of the Beja Tribes of the Sudan |date=1954 |publisher=Frank Cass and Company Limited |location=London |isbn=0714617105 |pages=64–66}} The Hadendoa Beja by the 18th century dominated much of eastern Sudan. In the Mahdist War of the 1880s to 1890s, the Beja fought on both sides, the Hadendoa siding with the Mahdist troops, while the Bisharin and Amarar tribes sided with the British,Orville Boyd Jenkins, [http://strategyleader.org/profiles/beja.html Profile of the Beja people] (1996, 2009). and some Beni Amer - a subset of the Beja who live largely in Eritrea sided with the Ethiopian Ras Alula in certain battles, such as Kufit.{{cite book |last=Wingate |first=Francis |date=1891 |title=Mahdiism and the Egyptian Sudan: Being an Account of the Rise and Progress of Mahdiism and of Subsequent Events in the Sudan to the Present Time |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=3swNAAAAIAAJ&q=mahdism+in+the+egyptian+sudan |location=London |publisher=Macmillan and Company |page=230 }}

File:Aksum, iscrizione di re ezana, in greco, sabeo e ge'ez, 330-350 dc ca. 10.jpg commemorates a Kingdom of Aksum foray into Beja territory and Meroe.]]

The Beja Congress was formed in 1952 with the aim of pursuing regional autonomy from the government in Khartoum. Frustrated by the lack of progress, the Beja Congress joined the insurgent National Democratic Alliance in the 1990s. The Beja Congress effectively controlled a part of eastern Sudan centered on Garoura and Hamshkoraib. The Beja Congress sabotaged the oil pipeline to Port Sudan several times during 1999 and 2000. In 2003, they rejected the peace deal arranged between the Sudanese government and the Sudan People's Liberation Army, and allied with the rebel movement of the Darfur region, the Sudan Liberation Movement/Army, in January 2004. A peace agreement was signed with the government of Sudan in October 2006. In the general elections in April 2010, the Beja Congress did not win a single seat in the National Assembly in Khartoum. In anger over alleged election fraud and the slow implementation of the peace agreement, the Beja Congress in October 2011 withdrew from the agreement, and later announced an alliance with the Sudan Liberation Movement/Army.{{cn|date=April 2023}}

File:Beni Amer woman with her daughter.jpg

The Beja people inhabit a general area between the Nile River and the Red Sea in Sudan, Eritrea and eastern Egypt known as the Eastern Desert. Most of them live in the Sudanese states of Red Sea around Port Sudan, River Nile, Al Qadarif and Kassala, as well as in Northern Red Sea, Gash-Barka, and Anseba Regions in Eritrea, and southeastern Egypt. There are smaller populations of other Beja ethnic groups further north into Egypt's Eastern Desert. Some Beja groups are nomadic. The Kharga Oasis in Egypt's Western Desert is home to a large number of Qamhat Bisharin who were displaced by the Aswan High Dam. Jebel Uweinat is revered by the Qamhat.

The Beja have been named "Blemmyes" in Roman times,Stanley Mayer Burstein, Ancient African Civilizations: Kush and Axum, p. 167 (2008) Bəga in Aksumite inscriptions in Ge'ez,{{cite web |last1=Hatke |first1=George |title=Aksum and Nubia: Warfare, Commerce, and Political Fictions in Ancient Northeast Africa |url=http://dlib.nyu.edu/awdl/isaw/hatke2013-aksum-and-nubia/ |website=Ancient World Digital Library |publisher=NYU Press |access-date=29 May 2020}} and "Fuzzy-Wuzzy" by Rudyard Kipling. Kipling was specifically referring to the Hadendoa, who fought the British, supporting the Mahdi, the Sudanese leader of the war against Turkish-Egyptian rule, supported by the British Imperial administration.

File:Hamito-Semitic languages.jpg speakers.]]

Many of the Beja speak Arabic, while some speak the Beja language, known as Bidhaawyeet or Tubdhaawi in that language. It belongs to the Cushitic branch of the Afroasiatic family.{{cite web |title=Bedawiyet |url=https://www.ethnologue.com/language/bej |access-date=14 October 2016 |publisher=Ethnologue}} Cohen noted that the Beja language is the Cushitic language with the largest proportion of Semitic roots, and stated that they are in majority of Arabic origin.{{Cite book |last1=Vossen |first1=Rainer |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=wcjXDwAAQBAJ&pg=PA304 |title=The Oxford Handbook of African Languages |last2=Dimmendaal |first2=Gerrit J. |date=2020-03-13 |publisher=Oxford University Press |isbn=978-0-19-960989-5 |pages=304 |language=en}}

The French linguist Didier Morin (2001) has made an attempt to bridge the gap between Beja and another branch of Cushitic, namely Lowland East Cushitic languages and in particular Afar and Saho, the linguistic hypothesis being historically grounded on the fact that the three languages were once geographically contiguous.Martine Vanhove, [http://halshs.archives-ouvertes.fr/docs/00/06/52/11/PDF/Beja_State_of_the_Art_Bergen.pdf The Beja Language Today in Sudan: The State of the Art in Linguistics] 2006. Most Beja speak the Beja language, but certain subgroups use other lingua franca. The Beni Amers speak a variety of Tigre, whereas most of the Halenga speak Arabic.

Although there is a marked Arabic influence, the Beja language is still widely spoken. The very fact that the highest moral and cultural values of this society are in one way or the other linked to their expression in Beja, that Beja poetry is still highly praised, and that the claims over the Beja land are only valid when expressed in Beja, are very strong social factors in favour of its preservation. True enough Arabic is considered as the language of modernity, but it is also very low in the scale of Beja cultural values as it is a means of transgressing social prohibitions. Beja is still the prestigious language for most of its speakers because it conforms to the ethical values of the community.

File:African - Beja Shield - Walters 511398.jpg]]

The Beja are divided into clans. These lineages include the Bisharin, Hedareb, Hadendowa (or Hadendoa), the Amarar (or Amar'ar), Beni-Amer, Hallenga, Habab, Belin and Hamran, some of whom are partly mixed with Bedouins in the east.{{cn|date=April 2023}}

Beja society was traditionally organized into independent kingdoms. According to Al-Yaqubi, there were six such Beja polities that existed between Aswan and Massawa during the 9th century. Among these were the Kingdom of Bazin, Kingdom of Belgin, Kingdom of Jarin, Kingdom of Nagash, Kingdom of Qita'a and Kingdom of Tankish.{{cite book|last1=Elzein|first1=Intisar Soghayroun|title=Islamic Archaeology in the Sudan|date=2004|publisher=Archaeopress|isbn=1841716391|page=13|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=2jwuAQAAIAAJ|access-date=13 March 2015}}

• Kingdom of Jarin
• Osman Digna
• History of Sudan
• Demographics of Sudan

{{reflist}}

• {{cite journal |last1=Morton |first1=John |title=Sakanab: Greetings and Information among the Northern Beja |journal=Africa |date=1988 |volume=58 |issue=4 |pages=423–436 |doi=10.2307/1160350|jstor=1160350 |s2cid=143559206 }}
• {{cite thesis |last=Morton |first=John |date=1989 |title=Descent, Reciprocity and Inequality among the Northern Beja |publisher=University of Hull |url=https://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.294080 }}
• {{cite book |last1=Hjort af Ornäs |first1=Anders |last2=Dahl |first2=Gudrun |title=Responsible Man: the Atmaan Beja of North-eastern Sudan |date=1991 |publisher=Stockholm Studies in Social Anthropology |location=Uppsala |isbn=9171469052}}
• {{cite book |last1=Jacobsen |first1=Frode |title=Theories of Sickness and Misfortune among the Hadandowa Beja of the Sudan: Narratives as Points of Entry into Beja Cultural Knowledge |date=1998 |publisher=Kegan Paul International |location=London |isbn=0710305915}}
• {{cite book |last1=Fadlalla |first1=Amal |title=Embodying Honor: Fertility, Foreignness, and Regeneration in Eastern Sudan |date=2007 |publisher=The University of Wisconsin Press |location=Madison |isbn=978-0299223809}}

• A. Paul. A history of the Beja tribes of the Sudan, Cambridge University Press, 2012.

{{commons category|Beja people}}

• [https://web.archive.org/web/20170422072303/http://peopleofafrica.info/#beja Beja People]
• [http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/para/beja.htm The Beja Congress]
• [http://www.alertnet.org/db/crisisprofiles/SD_INS.htm?v=in_detail Fighting erupts in Eastern Sudan]
• [https://web.archive.org/web/20080323105334/http://www.sudaneast.org.uk/ The National Movement for Eastern Sudan - NMES]
• [http://adroub.blogspot.nl/ Meet the Beja]

{{Ethnic groups in Eritrea}}{{Demographics of Sudan}}

{{Authority control}}

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Category:Ethnic groups in Egypt

Category:Ethnic groups in Eritrea

Category:Ethnic groups in Sudan

Category:Ethnic groups in North Africa

Category:Cushitic-speaking peoples

Category:Semitic-speaking peoples

Category:Arabic-speaking people

Category:Pastoralists

Category:African nomads

Category:Modern nomads

Category:Indigenous peoples of North Africa

Category:Indigenous peoples of East Africa

Category:Blemmyes

Category:Ethnic groups in the Middle East

Category:Muslim communities in Africa