Faifi

The Faifi are the mountain people of Jabal Fayfa, a cluster of steep peaks in the Jazan highlands of southwestern Saudi Arabia near the Yemen border. They belong to the Khawlan bin Amir tribal confederation, which also holds the neighbouring Razih and Munabbih mountains in Yemen, and are divided into some 18 tribes and 22 sub-tribes, nearly all bearing the family name al-Faifi. Their speech, Faifi, is so different from other Arabic that outsiders struggle to follow it: it uses the article im- instead of al- ('imjabal', the mountain) and keeps sounds and words lost elsewhere. Linguists disagree on what it is. Some, such as Michael Ahland, call it an independent language, and Janet Watson suggests that Faifi and Razihi may be holdouts of an old branch of Semitic once spoken in southwestern Arabia; recent Saudi studies (Alfaifi and colleagues, 2025) and Ahmed Ali (2024) treat it as a very old form of Arabic. Speakers distinguish Upper Faifi, spoken on the eastern summits and plains by one main tribe, and Lower Faifi of the western slopes, and can place each other by speech. About 50,000 people are Faifi (Alfaife 2018). The rugged terrain kept them largely self-governing until roads arrived in the late 20th century.

Faifi villages of stone houses cling to slopes rising above 1,800 metres, linked by narrow paths and stairways, with farm terraces cut into the mountainsides. The mountains catch monsoon rain, so Fayfa is green and grows Khawlani coffee, mangoes, figs, papaya and maize; Fayfa holds the kingdom's largest coffee nursery, and a community coffee walkway now draws visitors. Men of the Jazan and Asir highlands once wore garlands of herbs and flowers on their heads (the 'Flower Men') with silver-studded belts and daggers. Tribal identity governs land, marriage and dispute settlement. Poetry is composed in Faifi, and the speech is a source of local pride, though one Faifi scholar called it a 'cursed language' for its strangeness to outsiders. Faifi academics discuss their language, history and culture on YouTube and Facebook.

The Faifi are Sunni Muslims. Like the rest of the Jazan highlands and Tihama they followed the Shafi'i school, and their isolation kept them apart from the Wahhabi reform of central Arabia until roads, schools and state religious media reached the mountains in the late 20th century; today religious teaching follows the Saudi establishment. Village mosques are the centre of religious life. No study describes surviving folk practices or pre-Islamic elements among the Faifi.

Faifi has no Scripture, no JESUS Film and no audio recordings, and it has no written standard. All Faifi under middle age are fluent in Saudi Arabic and Standard Arabic, so Arabic Bibles and media are understood, but Faifi is the language of home and identity, and oral material in it would speak most directly. No Christians or outreach are known among the Faifi.