Shilluk people

Shilluk

Two Shilluk men, photographed 1936 near Malakal, South Sudan
Total population
Approximately ~ 1,500,000 (2005)
Languages
Dhøg Cøllø or Dhø Cølø
Religion
Christianity African traditional religion
Related ethnic groups
Other Luo peoples, other Nilotic peoples

The Shilluk (Shilluk: Chollo) are a major Luo Nilotic people of Southern Sudan, living on both banks of the river Nile, in the vicinity of the city of Malakal. Before the second Sudanese civil war the Shilluk also lived in a number of settlements on the northern bank of the Sobat River, close to where the Sobat joins the Nile, with Doleib Hill as an important mission station.

The Shilluk are the third largest ethnic group of Southern Sudan, after the Dinka and their neighbors the Nuer.

Their language is called Dhøg Cøllø or Dhø Cølø, dhøg being the Shilluk word for language and mouth. It belongs to the Luo branch of the Western Nilotic subfamily of Nilo-Saharan.

History and Culture

Historically the Shilluk were led by a king Reth who is considered to be from the divine lineage of 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. The Shilluk people created the Shilluk Kingdom which existed in Southern Sudan for nearly 400 years (1490 to 1865).

Religion

Most Shilluk have converted to Christianity, while some still follow the traditional religion or a mixture of the two; small numbers have converted to Islam. The Shilluk pride them selves in being one of the first Nilotic groups to accept Christianity. Such is the teaching of the Episcopal Church of the Sudan which dates the event to the late 19th Century when the Church Mission Society first began to send missionaries. Numerous colonial policies and missionary movements have divided Shilluk into between the Catholic and Protestant denominations. 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 Doleib Hill, located to the south of Malakal on the eastern side of the Nile, but situated on the Sobat river. The Shilluk were a minority in the SPLM faction for most of the Second Sudanese Civil War, their number peaking in the late 1980s and the pre-ceasefire fighting in 2004.

Violence

During the summer of 2010, the Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA), in an attempt to disarm the tribe and stop a local Shilluk rebellion, burned a number of villages and killed an untold number of civilians in South Sudan's Shilluk Kingdom.^[1] Over 10,000 people were displaced in the midst of the rainy season and sent fleeing into the forest, often naked, without bedding, shelter or food, with many children dying from hunger and cold.^[1]

Violence has started again in April 2011 with a SPLA crackdown on rebel controlled regions. Shilluk and well as Nuba are the alleged victims.^[2]

Footnotes

References

• Corbett, Greville G. (2000). Numbers. Cambridge, UK ; New York: Cambridge University Press. pp. 156–158. ISBN 0-521-64970-6.  This section discusses number systems in Dhok-Chollo.

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Shilluk.

• The Gateway to Shilluk Community
• Library of Congress Photo of two Shilluk men, dated 1936
• Mayhem in Sudan's Shilluk Kingdom