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Periodical article | Leiden University catalogue | WorldCat |
Title: | Legacies of Slavery in North-West Uganda: The Story of the 'One-Elevens' |
Author: | Leopold, Mark |
Year: | 2006 |
Periodical: | Africa: Journal of the International African Institute |
Volume: | 76 |
Issue: | 2 |
Pages: | 180-199 |
Language: | English |
Geographic term: | Uganda |
Subjects: | ethnic identity ethnogenesis slavery Peoples of Africa (Ethnic Groups) History and Exploration Labor and Employment Ethnic and Race Relations |
External links: | https://www.jstor.org/stable/40027108 http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/africa_the_journal_of_the_international_african_institute/v076/76.2leopold.pdf |
Abstract: | This article outlines the history of a people known as 'Nubi' or 'Nubians', northern Ugandan Muslims who were closely associated with Idi Amin's rule, and a group to which he himself belonged. They were supposed to be the descendants of former slave soldiers from southern Sudan, who in the late 1880s at the time of the Mahdi's Islamic uprising came into what is now Uganda under the command of a German officer named Emin Pasha. In reality, the identity became an elective one, open to Muslim males from the northern Uganda/southern Sudan borderlands, as well as descendants of the original soldiers. These soldiers, taken on by Frederick Lugard of the Imperial British East Africa Company, formed the core of the forces used to carve out much of Britain's East African Empire. From the days of Emin Pasha to those of Idi Amin, some Nubi men were identified by a marking of three vertical lines on the face - the 'One-Elevens'. Although since Amin's overthrow many Muslims from the north of the country prefer to identify themselves as members of local Ugandan ethnic groups rather than as 'Nubis', aspects of Nubi identity live on among Ugandan rebel groups, as well as in cyberspace. Bibliogr., notes, ref., sum. in English and French. [Journal abstract] |