Afro-Arabs
عرب أفارقة
Regions with significant populations
Gulf States, Levant, Yemen, East Africa, Swahili Coast, Sahel
 Saudi Arabia1,880,000 (around 5%; listed as Afro-Asian)[1]
Languages
Arabic, Teda, Hausa, Fula, Swahili, Coptic, Comorian
Religion
Majority Islam
Related ethnic groups
Afro-Saudis, Afro-Palestinians, Afro-Jordanians, Al-Akhdam, Afro-Iraqis, Afro-Syrians, Afro-Omanis, Oromos, Amharas, Horn Africans

Afro-Arabs or African Arabs are Arabs of full or partial African descent. These include primarily minority groups in the United Arab Emirates, Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Oman, and Qatar, as well as Syria, Iraq, Palestine, and Jordan. The term may also refer to various arab groups in Africa.[2]

Overview

Afro-Arab man of the Congo (ca. 1942).

Southern Arabia and Africa have been in contact since the obsidian-exchange networks of the seventh millennium BC. These networks were strengthened by the rise of the Egyptian dynasties of the fourth millennium BC. Researchers have indicated the possible settlement of people from Arabia in the Horn of Africa as early as the 3rd and 2nd millennia BC.[3]

The Afro-Arabian Tihama culture, which may have originated in Africa, began in the second millennium BC. This cultural complex is found in Africa, in countries such as Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Somalia and Sudan, as well as in neighbouring Yemen and the Saudi coastal plains.[3]

In the first millennium BC, Southern Arabians gained control of the Red Sea trade-routes and established the first kingdom of Yemen, Saba, in around 800 BC. As a result of Saba's influence, Eritrea and the north of Ethiopia were gradually incorporated into an area of Arabian influence. By 600 BC, the formation of the Habesha-Sabean state of Daamat arose in Eritrea and in the Tigray region of Ethiopia. Archaeological evidence indicates this was probably the result of small-scale colonization by various Arabian groups, including Sabeans.[4] Many Sabean scripts have been found in Eritrea, and even the name Saba is a very common female name in Eritrea, as well as in Tigray.

After several centuries of isolation, the Kingdom of Aksum arose in 100 AD. This kingdom existed for 800 years and occupied southern Arabia for part of this period. Utilitarian Aksumite pottery has been found in large quantities in deposits from the 5th and 6th centuries in the Hadhramaut region of Yemen, suggesting that there may have been substantial immigration during that period.

Southern Arabia was a client state of the Aksumite kingdom throughout the sixth century. Himyarite inscriptions document an invasion of Mecca by an ambitious Aksumite general named Abraha (Tigrinya: አብርሃ) in the year 570 AD.[5] An early incident in Islamic Afro-Arab relations, known as the First Hijrah, (Arabic: الهجرة إلى الحبشة, al-hijra ʾilā al-habaša), was an episode in the early history of Islam, where the first companions of the Prophet Muhammad (the Sahabah) fled from the persecution of the ruling Quraysh tribe of Mecca. They sought refuge in the Christian Kingdom of Aksum, in present-day Eritrea and northern Ethiopia (formerly referred to as Habesha land/Abyssinia, an ancient name whose origin is debated),[6] In 613 or 615 AD, the Aksumite monarch who received them is referred to as Ashama ibn Abjar or the Negus (Arabic: نجاشي, najāšī). Modern historians have alternatively identified him with King Armah and Ella Tsaham.[7] Some of the companions later returned to Mecca and made the hijra to Medina with Muhammad, while others remained in Habesha land until they came to Medina in 628. The mosque they established is called the "Masjid aṣ-Ṣaḥābah". Located in the Eritrean city of Massawa, and dating to the early 7th century AD, it is believed to be the first mosque on the African continent.[8] Many companions settled there after Islam became established in the Arabian peninsula and the descendants of these companions still reside in the region.

From the 7th century onward Muslim communities were established along the coast of Eritrea and Somalia, subsequently spreading inland. The Arab slave trade, which began in pre-Islamic times but reached its height between 650 AD and 1900 AD, transported millions of African people from the Nile Valley, the Horn of Africa, and the eastern African coast across the Red Sea to Arabia. Millions more were taken from sub-Saharan Africa across the Sahara as part of the trans-Saharan slave trade.[9]

By around the first millennium AD, Persian traders established trading towns on what is now called the Swahili Coast,[10][11] which, between the tenth and twelfth centuries, became more Arabized.[12] The Portuguese conquered these trading centers after the discovery of the Cape Road. From the 1700s to the early 1800s, Muslim forces of the Omani empire re-seized these market towns, mainly on the islands of Pemba and Zanzibar. In these territories, Arabs from Yemen and Oman settled alongside the local "African" populations, thereby spreading Islam and establishing Afro-Arab communities.[13] The Niger-Congo Swahili language and culture largely evolved through these contacts between Arabs and the native Bantu population.[14]

In North Africa, Arabs historically had close connections to native continental Africans;

In the Arab states of the Persian Gulf, descendants of people from the Swahili Coast perform traditional Liwa and Fann at-Tanbura music and dance,[15] and the mizmar is also played by Afro-Arabs in the Tihamah and Hejaz. .

In addition, Stambali of Tunisia[16] and Gnawa music of Morocco[17] are both ritual music and dances that in part trace their origins to West African musical styles. Afro-Saudis make up 10% or approximately 1,880,000 of Saudi Arabia’s 18,880,000 native population. [18] [19]

Notable Afro-Arabs

See also

Citations

  1. ↑ "Saudi Arabia - The World Factbook". www.cia.gov. Retrieved 2021-07-17.
  2. ↑ "The multiple roots of Emiratiness: the cosmopolitan history of Emirati society". openDemocracy. Retrieved 2020-08-18.
  3. 1 2 Richards, Martin; Rengo, Chiara; Cruciani, Fulvio; Gratrix, Fiona; Wilson, James F.; Scozzari, Rosaria; Macaulay, Vincent; Torroni, Antonio (April 2003). "Extensive Female-Mediated Gene Flow from Sub-Saharan Africa into Near Eastern Arab Populations". The American Journal of Human Genetics. 72 (4): 1058–1064. doi:10.1086/374384. PMC 1180338. PMID 12629598.
  4. ↑ Richards, Martin; Rengo, Chiara; Cruciani, Fulvio; Gratrix, Fiona; Wilson, James F.; Scozzari, Rosaria; Macaulay, Vincent; Torroni, Antonio (April 2003). "Extensive Female-Mediated Gene Flow from Sub-Saharan Africa into Near Eastern Arab Populations". The American Journal of Human Genetics. 72 (4): 1058–1064. doi:10.1086/374384. PMC 1180338. PMID 12629598.
  5. ↑ Iwona Gajda: Le royaume de Ḥimyar à l’époque monothéiste. L’histoire de l’Arabie ancienne de la fin du ive siècle de l’ère chrétienne jusqu’à l’avènement de l’Islam. Paris 2009, pp. 142–146.
  6. ↑ E. A. Wallis Budge (Aug 1, 2014). A History of Ethiopia: Volume I: Nubia and Abyssinia. Routledge. pp. vii.
  7. ↑ M. Elfasi, Ivan Hrbek (1988). Africa from the Seventh to the Eleventh Century. UNESCO. p. 560.
  8. ↑ "Liste des premières mosquées au monde prophètique, rashidun et omeyyade selon les écris historique et les traces archéologiques". Histoire Islamique (in French). 2014-06-15. Retrieved 2017-09-24.
  9. ↑ Richards, Martin; Rengo, Chiara; Cruciani, Fulvio; Gratrix, Fiona; Wilson, James F.; Scozzari, Rosaria; Macaulay, Vincent; Torroni, Antonio (April 2003). "Extensive Female-Mediated Gene Flow from Sub-Saharan Africa into Near Eastern Arab Populations". The American Journal of Human Genetics. 72 (4): 1058–1064. doi:10.1086/374384. PMC 1180338. PMID 12629598.
  10. ↑ Brielle, Esther; et al. (2023). "Entwined African and Asian genetic roots of medieval peoples of the Swahili coast". Nature. 615 (7954): 866–873. doi:10.1038/s41586-023-05754-w. PMC 10060156. A key finding of this study is genetic evidence of admixture at roughly 1000 CE between people of African and people of Persian ancestry. This admixture is consistent with one strand of the history recorded by the Swahili themselves, the Kilwa Chronicle, which describes the arrival of seven Shirazi (Persian) princes on the Swahili coast. At Kilwa, coin evidence has dated a ruler linked to that Shirazi dynasty, Ali bin al-Hasan, to the mid-11th century. Whether or not this history has a basis in an actual voyage, ancient DNA provides direct evidence for Persian-associated ancestry deriving overwhelmingly from males and arriving on the eastern African coast by about 1000 CE. This timing corresponds with archaeological evidence for a substantial cultural transformation along the coast, including the widespread adoption of Islam.
  11. ↑ Rothman, Norman (2002). "Indian Ocean Trading Links: The Swahili Experience". Comparative Civilizations Review. 46 (46).
  12. ↑ Spear, Thomas (2000). "Early Swahili History Reconsidered". The International Journal of African Historical Studies. 33 (2): 257–290. doi:10.2307/220649. JSTOR 220649.
  13. ↑ Hinde 1897, p. 2.
  14. ↑ Tarikh, Volumes 1-2. Longman. 1966. p. 68. Retrieved 6 December 2016.
  15. ↑ Olsen, Poul Rovsing (1967). "La Musique Africaine dans le Golfe Persique" [African Music in the Persian Gulf]. Journal of the International Folk Music Council (in French). 19: 28–36. doi:10.2307/942182. JSTOR 942182.
  16. ↑ Jankowsky, Richard C. (Fall 2006). "Black Spirits, White Saints: Music, Spirit Possession, and Sub-Saharans in Tunisia". Ethnomusicology. The University of Illinois Press/Ethnomusicology. 50 (3): 373–410. doi:10.2307/20174467. JSTOR 20174467. S2CID 191924116.
  17. ↑ "Gnawa Intangible Cultural Heritage". UNESCO. …ceremonies combining ancestral African practices, Arab-Muslim influences and native Berber cultural performances.
  18. ↑ https://www.cia.gov/the-world-factbook/countries/saudi-arabia/
  19. ↑ https://portal.saudicensus.sa/portal/

Bibliography

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