Tigre

The Tigre are Semitic-speaking pastoralists of Eritrea's lowlands and Red Sea coast, with kindred groups in Sudan. Their language is related to Ge'ez and Tigrinya. In several of their societies the word tigre originally meant a tributary serf class.

Arab Muslims reached the Dahlak islands as early as the eighth century and a Dahlak sultanate dominated coastal trade in the twelfth and thirteenth, while inland pastoral groups kept Christian and ancestral customs. From the sixteenth century their grazing lands became a frontier between the Ethiopian kingdom, the Funj sultanate of Sennar and Ottoman garrisons.

In the later eighteenth century the Na'ib family of Hergigo, governing as Ottoman deputies, made itself overlord of the Tigre-speaking clans. From the 1820s Egyptian expansion and the preaching of the Khatmiyya Sufi order began the rapid spread of Islam that would make most Tigre Sunni Muslims.