Afro-Arabs

"African Arabs" and "African Arab people" redirect here. For Arabs living in North Africa, see North African Arabs.
"Afro-Arab" redirects here. Not to be confused with the Africa-Arabian Peninsula relations of the African Union.
Afro-Arabs
عرب أفارقة
Regions with significant populations
Gulf States · Levant · Yemen · East Africa · Mauritania · Sahel · North Africa
Saudi Arabia3,600,000[1]
Yemen3,500,000[2]
Iraq1,500,000–2,000,000[3]
Mauritania1,500,000[4]
Jordan60,000[5]
Languages
Majority: Arabic
Minority: Hausa · Fula · Swahili · Comorian · Wolof
Religion
Predominantly Islam
Related ethnic groups
Ethnic groups of Africa
Afro-Saudis · Afro-Palestinians · Afro-Jordanians · Al-Muhamashīn · Afro-Iraqis · Afro-Syrians · Afro-Omanis · Afro-Emiratis • Sudanese Arabs

Afro-Arabs, African Arabs, or Black Arabs are Arabs who have substantial or predominant Sub-Saharan African ancestry. These include primarily minority groups in the United Arab Emirates, Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Oman, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain, Lebanon, Syria, Palestine, Jordan, Iraq, Libya, Western Sahara, Tunisia, Algeria, and Morocco. The term may also refer to various Arab groups in certain African regions.[6]

Overview

From the 7th century onward Muslim communities were established along the East African coast, subsequently spreading inland. The Arab slave trades, which began in pre-Islamic times but reached their 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 as part of the Red Sea slave trade. Millions more were taken from West Africa and East Africa across the Sahara as part of the trans-Saharan slave trade.[7]

By around the first millennium AD, Persian traders established trading towns on what is now called the Swahili Coast.[8][9]

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.[10] The Niger-Congo Swahili language and culture largely evolved through these contacts between Arabs and the native Bantu population.[11]

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,[12] and the mizmar is also played by Afro-Arabs in the Tihamah and Hejaz.

In addition, Stambali of Tunisia[13] and Gnawa music of Morocco[14] are both ritual music and dances that in part trace their origins to West African musical styles.

Notable Afro-Arabs in Early History

Early Islamic Personalities

Medival Islamic Rulers

Notable Afro-Arabs in Modern History

Rulers and Heads of State

Influential Personalities

See also

Citations

  1. ^ "Saudi-Arabia". The World Factbook (2025 ed.). Central Intelligence Agency. Retrieved 25 March 2017. (Archived 2017 edition.)
  2. ^ "Yemen's Al-Akhdam face brutal oppression". Archived from the original on 2014-11-29. Retrieved 2013-11-29.
  3. ^ "Refworld | World Directory of Minorities and Indigenous Peoples - Iraq : Black Iraqis".
  4. ^ "Mauritania". Retrieved 2024-11-05.
  5. ^ http://www.africanviews.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=105 Archived 2014-07-24 at the Wayback Machine Jordan
  6. ^ "The multiple roots of Emiratiness: the cosmopolitan history of Emirati society". openDemocracy. Retrieved 2020-08-18.
  7. ^ 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.
  8. ^ Brielle, Esther; et al. (2023). "Entwined African and Asian genetic roots of medieval peoples of the Swahili coast". Nature. 615 (7954): 866–873. Bibcode:2023Natur.615..866B. doi:10.1038/s41586-023-05754-w. PMC 10060156. PMID 36991187. 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.
  9. ^ Rothman, Norman (2002). "Indian Ocean Trading Links: The Swahili Experience".
  10. ^ Hinde 1897, p. 2.
  11. ^ Tarikh, Volumes 1-2. Longman. 1966. p. 68. Retrieved 6 December 2016.
  12. ^ 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.
  13. ^ Jankowsky, Richard C. (Fall 2006). "Black Spirits, White Saints: Music, Spirit Possession, and Sub-Saharans in Tunisia". Ethnomusicology. 50 (3). The University of Illinois Press/Ethnomusicology: 373–410. doi:10.2307/20174467. JSTOR 20174467. S2CID 191924116.
  14. ^ "Gnawa Intangible Cultural Heritage". UNESCO. …ceremonies combining ancestral African practices, Arab-Muslim influences and native Berber cultural performances.

Bibliography

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