BENI-AMER (Amir), a tribe of African “Arabs” of Hamitic stock, ethnologically intermediate between Abyssinians and Nubians. They are of the Beja family, and occupy the coast of the Red Sea south of Suakin and portions of the adjacent coast-country of Eritrea, north of Abyssinia. They are of very mixed Beja and Abyssinian blood, and speak a dialect half Beja and half Tigré, locally known as Hassa. They marry the women of the Bogos and other mountain tribes; but are too proud to let their daughters marry Abyssinians.

See Anglo-Egyptian Sudan, ed. Count Gleichen (London, 1905); A. H. Keane, Ethnology of Egyptian Sudan (1884); G. Sergi, Africa: Antropologia della Stirpe Camitica (Turin, 1897).