Abstract: Contact between the Arabian Peninsula and Eastern Africa pre-dates Islam. Today, an African presence is still evident in the Arabic society of the Arabian Peninsula: descendants of slaves and pilgrims, immigrants, traders... It is also evident either as a secondary or, more often, central aspect in the work of numerous authors from states in the peninsula –Sudan, the Emirates, Oman, Yemen– and notably in the work of the Sudanese writer Laylā Al-Ğuhanī and the Yemenite cAlī Al-Muqrī.
