Eritrea
Capital: Asmara · East Africa & Horn
Red Sea heir of the Aksumite world, with Ge'ez-script highland cultures, nine recognized ethnic groups and a modernist capital on the UNESCO list.
Ethnic communities
- TigrinyaHighland Orthodox Christian farmers, heirs of Aksum
- TigreLowland pastoralists with rich oral verse
- Afar & SahoCoastal and escarpment herding peoples
- Kunama & NaraAncient Nilotic-speaking communities of the west
More communities of Eritrea
- Saho · Escarpment herders between coast and plateau
- Afar · Dankalia's salt and fishing nomads
- Bilen · Keren-region farmers of Cushitic speech
- Kunama · Gash-Setit's ancient matrilineal cultivators
- Nara · Western lowland farmers of Nilotic tongue
- Hedareb (Beja) · Northwestern camel herders of Beja kin
- Rashaida · Red Sea Arab camel breeders in veiled finery
- Jeberti · Muslim Tigrinya-speaking merchant families
- Mensa & Marya · Northern highland lineage confederations
- Dahlak islanders · Pearl and fishing communities of the archipelago
- Habab · Tigre-speaking pastoral nobility of the north
- Asmarino urban families · The modernist capital's cosmopolitan heritage
Languages
Major languages: Tigrinya, Tigre, Arabic, Saho, Bilen
Language families: Afro-Asiatic (Semitic, Cushitic); Nilo-Saharan (Kunama, Nara)
Historical kingdoms & states
- • Kingdom of Aksum (core region)
- • Medri Bahri
Heritage sites
- • Asmara modernist city (UNESCO)
- • Adulis ancient port
- • Qohaito
Cultural highlights
National heroes of Eritrea
See all African heroesFigures widely honoured here, across politics, sport, the arts and public life.
- Sportb. 2000
Biniam Girmay
Cycling
First Black African to win a Tour de France stage and, in 2024, the first to win the green points jersey, with three stage wins in that race.
- Politics & liberation1905–1995
Woldeab Woldemariam
Nationalism
Teacher, unionist and broadcaster called the father of Eritrean nationalism. Survived several assassination attempts during the campaign for independence.
- Music & the arts1949–1997
Yemane Baria
Music
Known as Yemane Ghebremichael, his coded songs of longing became the soundtrack of the independence struggle.
- Sportb. 1982
Zersenay Tadese
Long-distance running
Won Eritrea's first Olympic medal in 2004 and held the half marathon world record for a decade.
Deep-dive community profiles
Afar
The salt-caravan nomads of the Danakil — one of the hottest places on earth — whose camel trains, sultanates and clan law have mastered a landscape of volcanoes and salt lakes that few others can even cross.
Open deep profile →Beja
The camel lords of the Red Sea Hills — Africa's ancient 'Blemmyes', sword-bearing clans of the Hadendowa, Bisharin and Ababda whose crossed-swords dances, coffee ceremonies and desert codes have held the corridor between Nile and sea for four thousand years.
Open deep profile →Bilen
The people of Keren — an Agaw-speaking island in a Semitic and Cushitic sea, half Muslim and half Christian, whose language is the last Agaw survival in Eritrea and whose women's hair and jewellery are the country's most photographed.
Open deep profile →Hadendoa
The Beja of the Red Sea hills — camel herders whose hair the British called fuzzy-wuzzy and whose ancestors broke a British infantry square at Tamai, and whose language descends from the speech of the ancient Blemmyes.
Open deep profile →Hedareb (Beni Amer)
Camel and cattle herders of the Eritrean-Sudanese lowlands, speakers of Beja Tigre and Arabic in varying combination, formed from a nineteenth-century confederation of Beja and Tigre-speaking groups under the Diglal, and among the most consistently displaced peoples of the Horn.
Open deep profile →Jeberti
Tigrinya-speaking Muslims of the Eritrean highlands, traders and craftsmen in a Christian agricultural society, whose long campaign to be recognised as an ethnic group rather than a religious minority was rejected by the Eritrean state.
Open deep profile →Kunama
The oldest inhabitants of the Gash-Setit — a Nilo-Saharan-speaking, matrilineal farming people surrounded by Semitic and Cushitic neighbours, who resisted every state that reached them and who have been displaced by the Eritrea-Ethiopia border war.
Open deep profile →Nara
One of Eritrea's nine recognised peoples and among its smallest, farmers of the western lowlands whose Nilo-Saharan language has no close relative in the country, and whose land sat directly on the front line of the war with Ethiopia.
Open deep profile →Rashaida
The last arrivals — Bedouin who crossed the Red Sea from Arabia in the 1840s, kept their Arabian dialect and their tents on the African shore, and whose women's veils and silverwork are among the most elaborate anywhere.
Open deep profile →Saho
The people of the escarpment — Cushitic herders and farmers who move between the Eritrean highlands and the Red Sea coastal plain with the seasons, and whose customary law code was written down and is still cited in court.
Open deep profile →Tigrayans
The northern highlanders of Ethiopia and Eritrea in whose land the Aksumite empire minted gold, raised granite obelisks and adopted Christianity in the 4th century — keepers of Ge'ez liturgy, rock-hewn churches and the legend of the Ark.
Open deep profile →Tigre
The pastoralists of Eritrea's western lowlands — Muslim herders speaking a language descended directly from Ge'ez, who overthrew their own hereditary nobility in the 1940s, and who formed the first generation of the independence movement.
Open deep profile →