Sudanese Arabs are the inhabitants of Sudan who identify as Arabs and speak Arabic as their mother tongue. Some of them are descendants of Arabs who migrated to Sudan from the Arabian Peninsula, although the rest have been described as Arabized indigenous peoples of Sudan of mostly Nubian, Nilo-Saharan, and Cushitic ancestry who are culturally and linguistically Arab, with varying cases of admixture from Peninsular Arabs. This admixture is thought to derive mostly from the migration of Peninsular Arab tribes in the 12th century, who intermarried with the Nubians and other indigenous populations, as well as introducing Islam. The Sudanese Arabs were described as a "hybrid of Arab and indigenous blood", and the Arabic they spoke was reported as "a pure but archaic Arabic". Burckhardt noted that the Ja'alin of the Eastern Desert are exactly like the Bedouin of Eastern Arabia.

Nubians are a Nilo-Saharan ethnic group indigenous to the region which is now Northern Sudan and southern Egypt. They originate from the early inhabitants of the central Nile valley, believed to be one of the earliest cradles of civilization. In the southern valley of Egypt, Nubians differ culturally and ethnically from Egyptians, although they intermarried with members of other ethnic groups, especially Arabs. They speak Nubian languages as a mother tongue, part of the Northern Eastern Sudanic languages, and Arabic as a second language.