Afro-Arabs or African Arabs are Arabs of full or partial African descent. These include primarily minority groups in Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Oman, and Qatar, as well as Syria, Iraq, Palestine, and Jordan. The term may also refer to various arabized groups in Africa.
Overview
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 likely existence of Arabian settlements of peoples from the Horn of Africa as early as the third and second millennia BC.
The Afro-Arab Tihama culture, which 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. In the first millennium BC, Southern Arabs 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. 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. South Arabians/Yemenites and the Habeshites (Ethiopians) share a cultural, scriptural, genetic and historical heritage.
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. An early incident in post-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), 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. 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. Many companions settled there after Islam became established in the Arabian peninsula and the descendants of these companions still reside in the region.
By around the first millennium AD, Bantu fishermen established trading towns on what is now called the Swahili Coast, which, between the tenth and twelfth centuries, became more Arabized. 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. The Niger-Congo Swahili language and culture largely evolved through these contacts between Arabs and the native Bantu population.
In North Africa, Arabs historically had close connections to native continental Africans; however, racial discrimination still plays a major role in the segregating of Afro-Arabs from the primarily Arab-descended population, such as in Algeria, Egypt, Libya, Morocco and Tunisia, as well as in the territory of Western Sahara.