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788 TIGRE
Unpublished Manuscript
Soonthornpasuch, Suthep. "Islamic Identity in Chiengmai City: A Historical and Structural
Comparison of Two Communities." Ph.D. dissertation, University of California,
Berkeley, 1977.
Ray Scupin
TIGRE The nomadic Tigre practice pastoralism in the hills and lowlands of
the northern and western parts of Ethiopia's Eritrea and Tigre provinces. Nearly
all Muslim, they number at least 350,000, probably more.
Tigre is a Semitic language of the Afro-Asiatic family, closely related to
Tigrinya. Academic specialists, however, consider the languages mutually unintelligible.
It has no script of its own and is written in Gez, the script of the
Ethiopian church (Monophysite or Coptic). Many literate Tigre write in Arabic.
Not only a language and a people, Tigre is also the name of a major province
in Eritrea, which the Tigre people share with the Tigrinya speakers, who outnumber
them considerably. However, the Tigrinya speakers, who are overwhelmingly
Christian, are sedentary while the Tigre are pastoralists, herders of
cattle, goats, sheep and camels, which they sell in the markets for the produce
and manufactured items they need to survive.
Tigre living on Red Sea islands were among the first converts to Islam as it
began its expansion from Arabia in the seventh century. Most conversion of the
Tigre, however, took place in the nineteenth century, when disciples of Sayyed
Ahmad ibn Idriss left Arabia to found Sufi orders. One of his pupils, Sayyed
Muhammad 'Uthman al-Mirghani, was sent to Sudan and Eritrea to engage in
missionary work. The Mirghani remains the dominant Muslim tariqa in eastern
Sudan and Eritrea.
A large number of Tigre, perhaps as many as 175,000, are part of the Beni
Amer, a confederation of various groups that have formed a single unit. Numbering
at least 260,000 in both Ethiopia and Sudan, the Beni Amer are a pastoral
polity connected with the larger Beja peoples (see Beja). Their most striking
feature is the division of the Beni Amer into two classes, the rulers, who are
Beja, and the serfs, who are largely Tigre. A system of mutual obligations and
rights maintains the structure (see Beni Amer).
Eritrea has been rent with violence for many years as the government of
Ethiopia attempts to incorporate the province forcibly into the Ethiopian political
and economic system. Many Tigre have left the country to settle in Sudan. The
future of those who have remained will continue to be one of hardship, not only
because of the fighting but because a new Marxist government in Addis Ababa
is not sympathetic to those who lead a non-sedentary life-style, especially if they
are Muslims.