The Ababda ( or ) are an

Arab Arabs (, , ; , , ) are an ethnic group mainly inhabiting the Arab world in West Asia and North Africa. A significant Arab diaspora is present in various parts of the world. Arabs have been in the Fertile Crescent for thousands of years ...

or Beja

tribe The term tribe is used in many different contexts to refer to a category of human social group. The predominant worldwide use of the term in English is in the discipline of anthropology. The definition is contested, in part due to conflict ...

in eastern

Egypt Egypt ( , ), officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, is a country spanning the Northeast Africa, northeast corner of Africa and Western Asia, southwest corner of Asia via the Sinai Peninsula. It is bordered by the Mediterranean Sea to northe ...

and

Sudan Sudan, officially the Republic of the Sudan, is a country in Northeast Africa. It borders the Central African Republic to the southwest, Chad to the west, Libya to the northwest, Egypt to the north, the Red Sea to the east, Eritrea and Ethiopi ...

. Historically, most were

Bedouins The Bedouin, Beduin, or Bedu ( ; , singular ) are pastorally nomadic Arab tribes who have historically inhabited the desert regions in the Arabian Peninsula, North Africa, the Levant, and Mesopotamia (Iraq). The Bedouin originated in the Sy ...

living in the area between the

Nile The Nile (also known as the Nile River or River Nile) is a major north-flowing river in northeastern Africa. It flows into the Mediterranean Sea. The Nile is the longest river in Africa. It has historically been considered the List of river sy ...

and the

Red Sea The Red Sea is a sea inlet of the Indian Ocean, lying between Africa and Asia. Its connection to the ocean is in the south, through the Bab-el-Mandeb Strait and the Gulf of Aden. To its north lie the Sinai Peninsula, the Gulf of Aqaba, and th ...

, with some settling along the trade route linking Korosko with

Abu Hamad Abu Hamad (, ), also spelt 'Abu Hamed', is a town of Sudan on the right bank of the Nile, by rail north of Khartoum. It stands at the centre of the great S-shaped bend of the Nile, and from it the railway to Wadi Halfa strikes straight across t ...

. Numerous traveler accounts from the nineteenth century report that some Ababda at that time still spoke Beja or a language of their own, hence many secondary sources consider the Ababda to be a Beja subtribe. Most Ababda now speak Arabic and identify as an Arab tribe from the

Hijaz Hejaz is a historical region of the Arabian Peninsula that includes the majority of the western region of Saudi Arabia, covering the cities of Mecca, Medina, Jeddah, Tabuk, Yanbu, Taif and Al-Bahah. It is thus known as the "Western Province ...

. The Ababda have a total population of over 250,000 people.

Origin and history

Ababda tribal origin narratives identify them as an

people from the

, descended from

Zubayr ibn al-Awwam Al-Zubayr ibn al-Awwam ibn Khuwaylid al-Asadi (; ) was an Arab Muslim commander in the service of the Islamic prophet Muhammad and the caliphs Abu Bakr () and Umar () who played a leading role in the Ridda Wars, Ridda wars against rebel tribes in ...

(possibly through his son

Abd Allah ibn al-Zubayr Abd Allah ibn al-Zubayr ibn al-Awwam (; May 624October/November 692) was the leader of a caliphate based in Mecca that rivaled the Umayyads from 683 until his death. The son of al-Zubayr ibn al-Awwam and Asma bint Abi Bakr, and grandson of ...

) following the

Muslim conquest of Egypt The Arab conquest of Egypt, led by the army of Amr ibn al-As, took place between 639 and 642 AD and was overseen by the Rashidun Caliphate. It ended the seven-century-long Roman Egypt, Roman period in Egypt that had begun in 30 BC and, more broa ...

. Many published sources in Western languages identify the Ababda as a subtribe of the Beja, or as descendants of speakers of a Cushitic language.

Language

Arabic

Today, virtually all Ababda communities speak Arabic. There is no oral tradition of having spoken any other language prior to Arabic, in keeping with Ababda Arab origin narratives. In a 1996 study, Rudolf de Jong found that the Ababda dialect of Arabic was quite similar to that of the Shukriya people of the Sudan, and concluded that it was an extension of the northern Sudanese dialect area.

Alfred von Kremer Alfred von Kremer (13 May 1828 in Penzing, Vienna; 27December 1889, Döbling) was an Austrian orientalist and politician. Life Alfred Kremer first studied Philosophy in Vienna, then Jurisprudence. He self-taught Modern Greek, Arabic, Hebr ...

reported in 1863 that the Ababda had developed an Arabic-based

thieves' cant Thieves' cant (also known as thieves' argot, rogues' cant, or peddler's French) is a cant (language), cant, cryptolect, or argot which was formerly used by thieves, beggars, and hustlers of various kinds in Great Britain and to a lesser extent i ...

that only they understood.

Ababda or Beja Language

There is rich evidence confirming that as late as the second half of the 19th century the Ababda were bilingual in Arabic and a

Beja language Beja ( or ) is an Afroasiatic language of the Cushitic branch spoken on the western coast of the Red Sea by the Beja people. Its speakers inhabit parts of Egypt, Sudan and Eritrea. In 2022 there were 2,550,000 Beja speakers in Sudan, and 121,00 ...

that was either identical or closely related to Bisharin. A distinct language being spoken by the Ababda has been reported by several early travellers, either identified as Beja or left without further description. In around 1770 the

Scottish Scottish usually refers to something of, from, or related to Scotland, including: *Scottish Gaelic, a Celtic Goidelic language of the Indo-European language family native to Scotland *Scottish English *Scottish national identity, the Scottish ide ...

traveller

James Bruce James Bruce of Kinnaird (14 December 1730 – 27 April 1794) was a Scottish traveller and travel writer who physically confirmed the source of the Blue Nile. He spent more than a dozen years in North and East Africa and in 1770 became the fir ...

claimed that they spoke the "Barabra" language, Nubian. At the turn of the 19th century, during the

French campaign in Egypt and Syria The French invasion of Egypt and Syria (1798–1801) was a military expedition led by Napoleon Bonaparte during the French Revolutionary Wars. The campaign aimed to undermine British trade routes, expand French influence, and establish a ...

, the engineer Dubois-Aymé wrote that the Ababda understood Arabic, but still spoke a language of their own. In the 1820s

Eduard Rüppell Wilhelm Peter Eduard Simon Rüppell, also spelled Rueppell (20 November 1794 – 10 December 1884) was a German Natural history, naturalist and List of explorers, explorer, best known for his collections and descriptions of plants and animals from ...

briefly stated that the Ababda spoke their own, seemingly non-Arabic language. A similar opinion was written by Pierre Trémaux after his journey in Sudan in the late 1840s.

John Lewis Burckhardt Johann Ludwig (also known as John Lewis, Jean Louis) Burckhardt (24 November 1784 – 15 October 1817) was a Swiss traveller, geographer and Orientalist. Burckhardt assumed the alias ''Sheikh Ibrahim Ibn Abdallah'' during his travels in Arabia ...

reported that in 1813 those Ababda who co-resided with the

Bishari tribe The Bishari (, or , romanized: ; Beja: ) are a Cushitic ethnic group who live in parts of Northeast Africa. They are one of the major divisions of the Beja people. Apart from local dialects of Arabic, the Bishari speak the Beja language, which b ...

spoke Beja. Alfred von Kremer believed them to be native Beja-speakers and was told that the Ababda were bilingual in Arabic, which they spoke with a heavy accent. Those who resided with the Nubians spoke Kenzi. Robert Hartmann, who visited the country in 1859/60, noted that the vast majority of the Ababda now spoke Arabic. However, in the past they used to speak a Beja dialect that was now, as he was told, solely restricted to a few nomadic families roaming the

Eastern Desert The Eastern Desert (known archaically as Arabia or the Arabian Desert) is the part of the Sahara Desert that is located east of the Nile River. It spans of northeastern Africa and is bordered by the Gulf of Suez and the Red Sea to the east, a ...

. He believed that they abandoned their language in favour of Arabic due to their close contact with other arabophone tribes. The Swedish linguist Herman Almkvist, writing in 1881, counted the Ababda to the Beja and noted that most had discarded the Beja language, supposedly identical to the Bishari dialect, in favour of Arabic, although "quite a lot" were still capable of understanding and even talking Beja. Bishari informants told him that in the past, the Bishari and Ababda were the same people.

Joseph Russegger Joseph Ritter von Russegger (18 October 1802 – 20 June 1863) was an Austrian geologist who was a native of Salzburg. He received his education in Salzburg, and in the years 1823 to 1825, was associated with the Mining and Forestry Academy at S ...

, who visited the country around 1840, noted that the Ababda spoke their own language, although he added that it was heavily mixed with Arabic. He believed it to be a "Nubian Bedouin" language and implied that this language, and the Ababda customs and appearance in general, is similar to that of the Bishari. Traveller

Bayard Taylor Bayard Taylor (January 11, 1825December 19, 1878) was an American poet, literary critic, translator, travel author, and diplomat. As a poet, he was very popular, with a crowd of more than 4,000 attending a poetry reading once, which was a record ...

wrote in 1856 that the Ababda spoke a language different from that of the Bishari, although it "probably sprang from the same original stock." The French Orientalist Eusèbe de Salle concluded in 1840, after attending a Beja conversation between Ababda and Bishari, that both understood each other reasonably well, but that the Ababda "definitely" had a language of their own. The physician

Carl Benjamin Klunzinger Carl Benjamin Klunzinger (18 November 1834, in Güglingen – 21 June 1914, in Stuttgart) was a German physician and zoologist. He studied medicine at the Universities of University of Tübingen, Tübingen and University of Würzburg, Würzb ...

wrote in 1878 that the Ababda would always speak Arabic while conversing with strangers, avoiding to speak their own language which he thought was a mixture of Arabic and Beja.C. B. Klunzinger (1878): ''Upper Egypt, Its People and its Products''. Blakie & son. 263–264

References

External links