[10] The Beja are traditionally Cushitic-speaking pastoral nomads native to northeast Africa, referred to as Blemmyes in ancient texts.

The geographer Abu Nasr Mutahhar al-Maqdisi wrote in the tenth century that the Beja were at that time Christians.

Frustrated by the lack of progress, the Beja Congress joined the insurgent National Democratic Alliance in the 1990s.

The Beja Congress effectively controlled a part of eastern Sudan centered on Garoura and Hamshkoraib.

In the general elections in April 2010, the Beja Congress did not win a single seat in the National Assembly in Khartoum.

The Kharga Oasis in Egypt's Western Desert is home to a large number of Qamhat Bisharin who were displaced by the Aswan High Dam.

The Beja have been named "Blemmyes" in Roman times,[16] Bəga in Aksumite inscriptions in Ge'ez,[17] and "Fuzzy-Wuzzy" by Rudyard Kipling.

[19] The French linguist Didier Morin (2001) has made an attempt to bridge the gap between Beja and another branch of Cushitic, namely Lowland East Cushitic languages and in particular Afar and Saho, the linguistic hypothesis being historically grounded on the fact that the three languages were once geographically contiguous.

True enough Arabic is considered as the language of modernity, but it is also very low in the scale of Beja cultural values as it is a means of transgressing social prohibitions.

These lineages include the Bisharin, Hedareb, Hadendowa (or Hadendoa), the Amarar (or Amar'ar), Beni-Amer, Hallenga, Habab, Belin and Hamran, some of whom are partly mixed with Bedouins in the east.