Hejaz (Western Arabia).
He describes them in the personal narrative of his pilgrimage to Makka and
Medina, as having attenuated limbs, a “chocolate brown” complexion and
“bushy hair” with “screaming voices.”
He called them the ruling clan of the Hejaz area, which is the area of Makka
the Holy City for Muslim pilgrims.
The Harb, who dwelt in the Northern Hejaz when visited by explorer Burton,
are by tradition the descendants of the Ghassan or Assanite Saracens
described by Roman writers like Ammianus Marcellinus.
The Hamida, the largest clan of the Harb, are mentioned in ancient South
Arabic inscriptions. Hamida are also found in modern Sudan.
The Beni Harb, according to Arab genealogy, were also related to those
Arabs that invaded North Africa in the llth century called Qays, Aileen, Banu
Suleiman and Hilalieen.
Thus it was that a few centuries after Ammianus Marcellinus wrote, men of
this sort proclaiming themselves followers of The Prophet Mohammed left
the Arabian peninsula, the area of the Hejaz and Yemen, lands which they
had inhabited for some 4,000 years.
They migrated to the countries to the North and North East of them, turning
the speech of those lands to the speech that is called Arab, and the culture
of those lands in part to the Afro Semitic culture.
The Semitic family of languages, the most widespread of which is Arabic, is
a branch of a larger language phylum called Afro-asiatic which consists of
the Semitic, Ancient Egyptian, Berber, Cushitic, Omotic and Chadic
families.
While some scholars maintain that Afro-asiatic originated in Asia, most
linguists now accept that it originated in Africa where five of the six
generally recognized branches still reside.
It likely evolved in the Darfur-Kordofan region along the present-day border
between Chad and Sudan.