Shilluk

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Shilluk portrait circa 1914

The Shilluk prefer to be known as Chollo, rather than the more widely known term, Shilluk, and their language as dhok-Chollo, dhok being the Chollo word for mouth. The Chollo are a major Nilotic ethnic group of southern Sudan, living on both banks of the river Nile, in the vicinity of the city of Malakal. The most extensive Chollo area is located on the western bank of the Nile north from Malakal. Before the second Sudanese civil war the Chollo also lived in a number of settlements on the northern bank of the Sobat river, close to where the Sobat joins the Nile, with Dolieb Hill as an important mission station.

The Shilluk are the third largest minority ethnic group of South Sudan, after the Dinka and their neighbors the Nuer. They are led by a king reth who is considered divine, and traces his lineage back to the culture hero Nyikang, and whose health is believed to affect that of the nation; Formerly, their society was fairly hierarchical, with castes of royals, nobles, commoners, and slaves. Like most Nilotic groups, cattle-raising formed a large part of their economy; however, agriculture and fishing were more significant than usual, and most were sedentary. Most Chollo have converted to Christianity, while some still follow the traditional religion, and small numbers have converted to Islam. Due to colonial policies which divided Chollo areas into spheres of influence for different missionary denominations, the Chollo are divided between Catholic and Protestant churches; the Catholic church was historically assigned the western bank of the Nile and ran missions stations at Lul, Detwoc, Tonga and Yoynyang, while the American Inland Mission ran a mission station at Dolieb Hill, located to the south of Malakal on the eastern side of the Nile, but situated on the Sobat river. The Shilluk stayed on the sidelines for most of the Second Sudanese Civil War, but were engulfed in fighting during 2004, although Shilluk intellectual, Dr. Lam Akol, sided with both the SPLA and the Government of Sudan at different times during the war.

Their language, the Shilluk language (or dhok-Chollo), belongs to the Luo branch of the Western Nilotic subfamily of Nilo-Saharan.

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[edit] Further Reading

Corbett, Greville G., 2000, Numbers, Cambridge University Press, pp 156-158, isbn 0521649706 - this section discusses number systems in Dhok-Chollo.