Talk:Beni-Amer people

Population

On 5 October, Buntz23 changed the population of the Beni Amer from 300,000 to 1.2 million, citing Lionel Trimmingham's Islam in Ethiopia & the CIA World Factbook. I reverted that change for two reasons: First, I could not find that number in either source. In fact, Trimmingham gives the much lower number of 90,000 individuals for Eritrea & Sudan together. Second, while I think these are both reliable sources, context matters: Trimmingham's book is seventy years old, which makes it a poor source for present population (WP:AGE MATTERS). On 6 October, Buntz23 removed the population data from the reverted version with the comment 'Lacks citations to reliable sources.'. The sources cited are James Stuart Olson's The Peoples of Africa: An Ethnohistorical Dictionary (1996) & Henry Louis Gates & Kwame Anthony Appiah's Encyclopedia of Africa (2010). I checked both sources, & both contain the same 300,000 number. I'm not sure by what argument these would be discounted as WP:RELIABLE sources.

I'd like to be clear that I am very skeptical of this number, or even its knowability. Eritrea has never conducted a census. The last relevant Ethiopian census would have been from 1987, & I'm not sure whether or not it tracked ethnicity. I am not championing an argument that 300,000 is the right number. However, for Wikipedia's purposes, it seems to me that it is at present the only number drawn from reliable sources, & that we haven't seen a reliable source that contradicts it (either by claiming 1.2 million or by asserting that the number is unknowable). For this reason, I reverted that second change, restoring the 300,000 number. I've created this Talk page topic so that we can discuss source reliability if necessary. Pathawi (talk) 14:52, 6 October 2022 (UTC)

The census was actually 1984—don't know how I got that wrong twice. I've looked at the census, & it does have ethnic breakdown, but it doesn't count the Banī ʕāmir. There are categories for "Beja" and "Tigre". It is possible that the former is identical with the "Beni Amer", but it's also possible that people who self-identified thus were split between these two census demographic categories. This is neither here nor there with regard to the issue of the reliability of the sources in question—just a comment on the likelihood of finding better information at this point in time. Pathawi (talk) 19:51, 6 October 2022 (UTC)

Beni Amer made up 60% ish of all Tigre people. Do the math and you get the population i added. Buntz23 (talk) 07:27, 17 October 2022 (UTC)

I see. My guess is that the starting point for your reasoning is something like: The CIA World Factbook gives a total 2022 population for Eritrea of 6,209,262 & states that Tigre people are around 30% of the population, so that makes 1,862,778.6 Tigre people. Where does the 60% number come from? I haven't been able to find it in Trimmingham, but maybe I'm just missing it. (The things I'm worrying about: The Banī ʕāmir in the Sudan. The age of sources. The difficulty of trying to draw a category "Beni Amer" from a source that talks about Tigre people & Beja people.) Pathawi (talk) 13:30, 17 October 2022 (UTC)

Its in Triminghams book. Tigre ppl are divided into sub-groups, Beni Amer, Bet Asgede, Marya and Mensa. In Triminghams book there is a census of all those sub-groups. You add all of their numbers together and the Beni Amer sub-group makes up around 60%. Buntz23 (talk) 02:38, 19 October 2022 (UTC)

Okay. I think that might be more of a stretch with calculation than we should accept. Trimmingham gives 90,000 Banī ʿĀmir (60,000 in Eritrea, 30,000 in the Sudan; 157), 42,000 Bait Asgade (25,000 Ḥabāb, 10,000 Ād Taklēs, 7,000 Ād Tamāryām; 158), 6,499 Mansa (3,850 Bait Abrehē, 2,649 Bait Eshhaqān; 163), & 25,000 Mārya (167). So I see how that comes to ~55% Beni Amer. But I think there are three major problems:

1. The numbers aren't actually comparable. For the Mansa, the numbers are from missionary churches in the '30s. For the others, we don't know the sources, but the book is from 1952.
2. Because some of these groups were multilingual in the '50s, the categories don't really match up to the CIA ethnolinguistic category "Tigre".
3. All of the sources are just too old to be able to make this kind of extrapolation seventy to ninety years later. Think of another extrapolation we could make: If the population of Eritrea was 822,576 in 1951 & the Banī ʕāmir numbered 60,000, then if the projected population of Eritrea is 6.2 million in 2022, we should project that the Banī ʕāmir population of Eritrea is ~450,000. That doesn't tell us how many to think there are in the Sudan, but if the proportion remained constant, it'd be ~675,000 Banī ʕāmir people total. (My 1950 number comes from UN estimates, while the current 6.2 million is the CIA estimate. At present, the UN estimates 3.684 million Eritreans. This would lead to a population more like ~270,000 Banī ʕāmir in Eritrea in 2022.) These projections are pretty different, & I don't know how we could choose one over the other. I think the reality is just that we can't make these kinds of calculations from numbers (which were probably pretty spotty in the first place) over such a long period of time which has seen so many profound changes in Eritrea.

I don't mean to beat a dead horse. If you're not currently trying to change that number we can drop it.

Pathawi (talk) 03:22, 19 October 2022 (UTC)

This is off topic, but i was wondering how do you add pictures on a Wikipedia page? You seem to be pretty experienced in Wikipedia. Buntz23 (talk) 05:10, 19 October 2022 (UTC)

I'm not the best person to answer your question, but there's a nice PDF guide for how to do it: Illustrating Wikipedia. I hope that helps! Pathawi (talk) 14:52, 19 October 2022 (UTC)