BEJA. The truly Hamitic, i.e., Beja, area of the Anglo-Egyp tian Sudan extends from the Red Sea to the Nile, and from the Egyptian boundary in the north to the neighbourhood of the junc tion of the Atbara with the Nile. South of this there are no easily defined natural boundaries, but the tribes do not come west of the Atbara in any strength, so that roughly speaking this river may be considered their western limit until it reaches the Abyssinian boundary between 15° and 14° N. The tribes inhabit ing this area may be divided into three great groups. From north to south these are : (1) The Bisharin, extending for some 8om. south of the Egyptian boundary, and occupying a strip of territory stretching along the right bank of the Atbara.
(2) The Hadendoa, with a number of closely allied tribes of which the Hadendoa is the strongest and best known. Including the Amarar, the Nurab, the Ashraf and the Artega, the country of the Hadendoa extends south and east of the Bisharin territory as far as Tokar and the Khor Baraka, and thence southwards to the neighbourhood of Kassala. West of the Khor Baraka and its main tributary, the Khor Langeb, the country belongs to the Beni Amer. The Halenga near Kassala, who have adopted many Abyssinian ideas and habits, should probably be included in the Hadendoa group; they are certainly Beja, as are the so-called Hamran Arabs.
(3) The Beni Amer, extending into Eritrea, where they form one of the most important elements in the population.
Bisharin and Hadendoa (and allied tribes) speak a Hamitic language called To Bedawi; the Beni Amer speak a Semitic language known as Tigre. But in spite of the difference in language the habits of the Beni Amer and Hadendoa are largely identical, although the latter are fiercer and wilder. During the Mandia, the Beni Amer took practically no part in the fighting which was so courageously sustained by the Hadendoa, the "Fuzzy-Wuzzy" of the British soldier.
As Seligman has pointed out ("Some Aspects of the Hamitic Problem in the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan," Journ. Roy. Antjirop. Inst., vol. xliii., 1913) the Beni Amer, their purest representatives, reproduce with astounding fidelity the physical characteristics of those early Hamites the predynastic Egyptians, the earliest known inhabitants of the Nile Valley. In stature (about 64in.) the two people are identical, as are the measurements and character of their skulls. North wards the skull becomes progressively broader, its length re maining approximately unaltered, so that the Hadendoa skull is rounder than that of the Beni Amer and the Bisharin skull is almost bracycephalic. This applies to the riverain Bisharin. Re cently G. W. Murray ("The Northern Beja," Journ. Roy. An throp. Inst., vol. lvii. 1927) has shown that the Bisharin of the Red Sea coast are dolichocephalic, with a cephalic index of 74.73. There is little difference in height between Beni Amer and Bish arin, but the Hadendoa are distinctly taller and often darker. The fact that the Hadendoa unlike the Beni Amer often have typically Armenoid (so-called "Jewish") noses is no doubt to be explained by an infusion of foreign blood from beyond the Red Sea. Apart from minor differences, the Beja are moderately short, slightly built men, with reddish-brown or brown skins. The face is usually long and oval, or approaching the oval in shape, the jaw is often lightly built, which, with the presence of a rather pointed chin, may tend to make the upper part of the face appear broader than it really is. The nose is well shaped and thoroughly Caucasian in type and form, except where Negro blood may be suspected. The hair is usually curly, in some cases it might be described as wavy, but the method of hair dressing adopted tends to make difficult an exact description of its condition. The hair on the face is sparse ; slight side-whiskers, moustache and chin-tuft beard are the rule, leaving the area between the lower lip and the chin bare, while there is also some considerable space between the whiskers and the moustache. Not uncommonly, especially in the younger men, the whole face is shaved.
Mode of Life.—Essentially nomad pastoralists, the relative ac cessibility of water in the Beja country, at any rate in the south (as compared with that of the nomad Arabs of Kordofan), per mits the free wanderings of units as small as the family group even in the dry season. The Mohammedanism of the Beja, though fervid in some tribes such as the Hadendoa, is relatively recent, for Makrizi (1346-1442) wrote of them as for the most part heathen, and even the little that is known of them at the present day indicates the persistence of a great number of non Islamic beliefs. (C. G. S.) See references in text and H. A. Mae Michael, Tribes of Northern and Central Kordofan (1912) and History of the Arabs in the Sudan (1922).
