Naqis

Naqis was a Beja kingdom in the Red Sea hills, with its chief town at Hajar. The historian al-Yaqubi recorded it in the ninth century.

From the 800s to the 1200s Arab miners worked alongside local Beja in the eastern desert. Gold and emerald mining and the trade in captives from the interior supported Naqis. Fortified mining works grew at Derahib in the same hills. Naqis was later absorbed into the Balaw kingdom of the later Middle Ages. The Bellou dominated parts of northwestern Eritrea until the sixteenth century.