Hijazi

The Hijazi are the people of the Hejaz, the Red Sea strip of western Arabia whose name means 'the barrier', between Najd and the Tihamah lowland, holding Islam's two holiest cities, Mecca and Medina, with the port of Jeddah. Antiquity's rock-cut Hegra centred the Thamud confederation; later Mecca was ruled by the Quraysh, Muhammad's tribe, whose hijra to Medina in 622 began the Islamic era, and Medina was the capital of the first caliphs until 656.

From 967 the Sharifs of Mecca, descendants of the Prophet's grandson Hasan, governed the holy cities under changing suzerains; after 1200 the Banu Qatadah held the emirate. The Mamluks made the Hejaz a province after 1350, and the Ottomans took over in 1517, appointing the sharifs themselves.

Wahhabi armies seized Mecca in 1803, but Egyptian forces retook Medina in 1812 and Mecca in 1813 and restored Ottoman rule. Sustained by the annual Hajj and Red Sea trade, the cosmopolitan Hejazi speak their own Arabic dialect.