Sudanese Arabs

Sudanese Arabs

عرب سودانيون
Sudanese Arab from the tribe of Manasir
Total population
c. 40,000,000
Regions with significant populations
Sudan 30,000,000[1]
Egypt	4,635,000[2]
Yemen	440,000[2]
South Sudan	348,000[2]
Libya	230,000[2]
Saudi Arabia	179,000[2]
United Arab Emirates	75,000[2]
Qatar	60,000[2]
Oman	19,000[2]
Turkey	9,600[2]
Languages
Sudanese Arabic
Religion
Sunni Islam
Related ethnic groups
Arabs, Nubians,[3] Beja, Cushites, Nilo-Saharans

Sudanese Arabs (Arabic: عرب سودانيون, romanized: ʿarab sūdāniyyūn) are the inhabitants of Sudan who identify as Arabs and speak Arabic as their mother tongue.^[4] Some of them are descendants of Arabs who migrated to Sudan from the Arabian Peninsula,^[5] although the rest have been described as Arabized indigenous peoples of Sudan of mostly Nubian,^[6] Nilo-Saharan, and Cushitic^[7] ancestry who are culturally and linguistically Arab, with varying cases of admixture from Peninsular Arabs.^[8] This admixture is thought to derive mostly from the migration of Peninsular Arab tribes in the 12th century, who intermarried with the Nubians and other indigenous populations, as well as introducing Islam.^[9][10] The Sudanese Arabs were described as a "hybrid of Arab and indigenous blood",^[11] and the Arabic they spoke was reported as "a pure but archaic Arabic".^[12] Burckhardt noted that the Ja'alin of the Eastern Desert are exactly like the Bedouin of Eastern Arabia.^[13]

Sudanese Arabs make up 70% of the population of Sudan,^[14] however prior to the independence of South Sudan in 2011, Sudanese Arabs made up only 40% of the population.^[15] They are Sunni Muslims and speak Sudanese Arabic. The great majority of the Sudanese Arabs tribes are part of larger tribal confederations: the Ja'alin, who primarily live along the Nile river basin between Khartoum and Abu Hamad; the Shaigiya, who live along the Nile between Korti and Jabal al-Dajer, and parts of the Bayuda Desert; the Juhaynah, who live east and west of the Nile, and include the Rufaa people, the Shukria clan and the Kababish; the Banu Fazara or Fezara people who live in Northern Kordofan; the Kawahla, who inhabit eastern Sudan, Northern Kordofan, and White Nile State; and the Baggara, who inhabit South Kordofan and extend to Lake Chad. There are numerous smaller tribal units that do not conform to the above groups, such as the Messelemiya, the Rikabia, the Hawawir people, the Magharba, the Awadia and Fadnia tribes, the Kerriat, the Kenana people, the Kerrarish, the Hamran, amongst others.^[16]

Sudan also houses non-Sudanese Arab populations such as the Rashaida that only recently settled in Sudan in 1846, after migrating from the Hejaz region of the Arabian Peninsula.^[17] Additionally, other smaller Sudanese groups who have also been Arabized, or partially Arabized, but retain a separate, non-Arab identity, include the Nubians, Copts, and Beja.