Tigre people
| Total population | |
|---|---|
| (1.7 million) | |
| Regions with significant populations | |
| Languages | |
| Tigre | |
| Religion | |
| Predominantly Islam 99.5%; minority Christianity .5% | |
| Related ethnic groups | |
| Afar • Agaw • Amhara • Beja • Bilen • Jeberti • Saho • Somali • Tigrinya people |
The Tigre people are an ethnic group residing in Eritrea and Sudan. They are a nomadic and pastoralist community related to the Biher-Tigrinya of Eritrea, as well as the Beja people of Sudan.
The Tigre are a predominantly Muslim nomadic people who inhabit the northern, western, and coastal lowlands of Eritrea (Gash-Barka, Anseba and Northern Red Sea regions of Eritrea), as well as areas in eastern Sudan. 99.5% of the Tigre people adhere to the Islamic religion Sunni Islam, but there are a small number of Christians among them as well (often referred to as the Mensaï in Eritrea).
The first Tigre converts to Islam were those who lived on islands in the Red Sea and were converted in the seventh century. Mainland Tigre were not converted to Islam until the nineteenth century.
They suffered persecution from both the Imperial and the Marxist governments of Ethiopia in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s, since they were both nomadic and Muslim. The Ethiopian government's efforts to settle the Tigre, combined with the Eritrean–Ethiopian War, resulted in the resettling of tens of thousands of Tigre in Sudan.
The Tigre language, like Tigrinya, is an Afro-Asiatic language of the Semitic branch, is similar to ancient Ge'ez. There is no known historically written form of the language. The Eritrean government uses the Ge'ez writing system (a syllabary) to publish documents in the Tigre language.
Tigre is the lingua franca of the multi-ethnic lowlands of western and northern Eritrea, including the northern coast. As such approximately 65% of the Western Lowlands Eritrean population speaks Tigre, although only about 30% are native Tigre speakers.
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