People
The inhabitants of North Africa are generally divided in a manner roughly corresponding to the principal geographic regions of North Africa: the Maghreb, the Nile Valley, and the Sahara. Northwest Africa on the whole is believed to have been inhabited by Berbers since before the beginning of recorded history, while the eastern part of North Africa has been home to the Egyptians and Nubians. Ancient Egyptians record extensive contact in their Western desert with people that appear to have been Berber or proto-Berber.
The official language or one of the official languages in all of the countries in North Africa is Arabic. The largest ethnic groups in North Africa are the Arabs and Berbers. North Africa is predominantly Muslim, with Christian and Jewish minorities.
(Southern Sudan is also considered part of Northern Africa.)
Read more about this topic: North Africa
Famous quotes containing the word people:
“The people who make wars, the people who reduce their fellows to slavery, the people who kill and torture and tell lies in the name of their sacred causes, the really evil people in a word—these are never the publicans and the sinners. No, they’re the virtuous, respectable men, who have the finest feelings, the best brains, the noblest ideals.”
—Aldous Huxley (1894–1963)
“For the LORD will not cast away his people, for his great name’s sake, because it has pleased the LORD to make you a people for himself.”
—Bible: Hebrew, 1 Samuel 12:22.
“The genius of the Spanish people is exquisitely subtle, without being at all acute; hence there is so much humour and so little wit in their literature.”
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834)