Y-STR-based study of the Jordanian Alnawar (Banu Murra) community: Evidence for a Levantine rather than Roma paternal...

The Jordanian Alnawar (Banu Murra) community represents a socially marginalized group within the Middle East. The Alnawar community has long faced systematic discrimination based on occupational stereotyping and hereditary stigma. While the Alnawar people affirm their Arab ancestry, alternative theories have proposed a Roma/(Gypsy) or Dom origin. In this study, we investigated their genetic identity and paternal ancestry by genotyping 27 Y-STR markers and assessing their phylogenetic relationships with selected regional populations. The results revealed a predominant frequency of the predicted haplogroup J1 (76.09%), followed by J2 (13.04%), congruent with populations from the Arabian Peninsula, Iraq, and the Levant. Furthermore, pairwise fixation index (F_ST) values among Jordanian subpopulations indicated low genetic differentiation and substantial shared paternal ancestry with other Jordanian groups such as the Bedouins and the Fellahin. Multidimensional scaling (MDS) and phylogenetic analyses clustered the Alnawar samples with Levantine and Arabian Peninsula populations, clearly separated from Roma/Gypsy and Dom/Indian-origin groups. Overall, our findings provide no evidence for the hypothesis of a paternal Indo-Aryan (Roma/South Asian) origin for the Alnawar (Banu Murra), instead supporting an Arab/Levantine ancestry. Nevertheless, more in-depth genetic studies will be essential to further clarify the origins of the Alnawar (Banu Murra) and related marginalized groups in the region.