The Beja are a non-Arab, Hamitic people,living in the area from southeastern Egypt through northeastern Sudan into Eritrea.
They are the indigenous people of this area, and we first know of them in historical references in the Sixth Dynasty of ancient Egypt. Over the centuries, they had contact and some influence from Greeks, Romans, Arabs and Turks.
The Beja speak Beja or To Bedawie, an Afro-Asiatic language usually classified as Cushitic, but sometimes seen as an independent branch. A significant number also speak Tigre or Arabic, which are both Afro-Asiatic languages as well, but of the Semitic branch.
Most of them live in the Sudanese states of Red Sea around Port Sudan, River Nile, Al Qadarifand Kassala, as well as in Northern Red Sea, Gash-Barka, and Anseba Regions in Eritrea, and in southeastern Egypt. There are smaller populations of other Beja ethnic groups in Egypt’s Western Desert as well as Yemen.
The Bejas contain smaller tribes, such as the Bisharin, Hedareb, Hadendowa (or Hadendoa), the Amarar (or Amar’ar), Beni-Amer, Hallenga and Hamran, some of them partly mixed with Bedouins and Berbers. The European colonial masters and the explorers became fascinated with the Bejas which they often described in eulogistic terms.
Hmmm…that first picture actually looks a lot like my paternal grandfather… Perhaps this is a piece of the Tesfai genealogical puzzle…
