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Beja people
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Beja people are an ethnic group dwelling parts of North-Eastern and Eastern Africa including the area of the Horn of Africa.
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The Beja are found mostly in Sudan, but also in parts of Ethiopia, Eritrea, and Egypt. They formerly were classified as belonging to the Hamitic stock (a now defunct classification).
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. Some Beja groups are nomadic.
The Beja have also been named "Blemmyes" in Roman times, "Bugas" in Axumite inscriptions in Ethiopia, "Fuzzy Wuzzy" by Rudyard Kipling.
The Beja speak Beja or To Bedawie, an Afro-Asiatic language (usually classified as Cushitic, but sometimes seen as an independent branch), but a significant number also speak Tigre, a Semitic language.
The Bejas contain smaller tribes, such as the Ababde or Ababda, Hedareb, Hadendowa or Hadendoa, the Amar'ar or Beni-Amer, Shukuria, Hallenga, Hamran and Bisharyyin, some of them partly mixed with Bedouins.[citation needed] The European colonial masters and the explorers became fascinated with the Bejas which they often described in eulogistic terms.
The Bejas (similarly to the Rastas) attach a high importance to their hair. Their prominent crown of fuzzy hair (called tiffa in their language) has characterized the Beja for centuries.
The Beja converted to Christianity in the 6th century under the influence of the three Nubian Christian Kingdoms that flourished along the Nile for 600 years: Nobatia, Makuria, and Alodia, as well as the Christian Kingdom of Aksum, under whose rule most lived from the 3rd to 8th centuries. Around the decline of the Aksumite kingdom, the Bejas founded 5 kingdoms in what is now northern Eritrea and east-northeastern Sudan. In the 13th century the Beja accepted Islam as the Bedouin tribes spread into Sudan and swamped the Nubian kingdoms.