Sahrawis
people living in the western Sahara desert
The Sahrawis, or Sahrawi people (Arabic: صحراويون, romanized: Ṣaḥrāwīyūn; Spanish: saharauis), are an ethnic group native to the western part of the Sahara desert, which includes the Western Sahara, southern Morocco, much of Mauritania, and along the southwestern border of Algeria. They are of mixed Hassani Arab and Sanhaji Berber descent, as well as West African and other indigenous populations.
As with most peoples living in the Sahara, the Sahrawi culture is a mix of Arab and indigenous African elements. Sahrawis are composed of many tribes and are largely speakers of the Hassaniya dialect of Arabic.
Etymology
Ṣaḥrāwī (صحراوي) is an Arabic word literally meaning "inhabitant of the desert". It is derived from the Arabic word for desert, Ṣaḥrā' (صحراء). A man is called a Sahrawi, and a woman is called a Sahrawiya. Traditionally, it referred to any inhabitant of the desert but came to refer to both the current and former inhabitants of the Western Sahara. Another term used to collectively refer to Sahrawis was Ahel es-Sahel meaning people of the west/coast of the desert.
History
Early history
Nomadic Berbers, mainly of the Senhaja/Zenaga tribal confederation, inhabited the areas now known as Western Sahara, southern Morocco, Mauritania and southwestern Algeria before Islam arrived in the 8th century CE. It is not known when the camel was introduced to the region (probably in the first or second millennium BCE), but it revolutionized the traditional trade routes of North Africa.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Sahrawis” as people living in the western Sahara desert. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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The subject matters to the general reference register because the source frames it as people living in the western Sahara desert. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 11, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q577055. The Library of Congress control number is sh99012949. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank.
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This entry incorporates text from “Sahrawis” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.