Azande (ethnicity)

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Azande soldiers
Settlement area

The Azande (also Zande, Zandeh, A-Zandeh, Sandeh, Zaude ) are an ethnic group in the north of Central Africa . Their number is estimated at one to four million.

They live mainly in the northern part of the DR Congo (province Ober-Zaïre), in South Sudan (state Western Equatoria ) and in the south-eastern part of the Central African Republic (districts Rafaï , Zémio and Obo ). Their language of the same name belongs to the group of Adamawa-Ubangi languages .

history

The ancestors of the Azande, the Ambomu, migrated to the area on the Mbomou River in the 17th century . In the middle of the 18th century, a militaristic aristocracy of the Avongara clan established itself . The Avongara King Gura (1755–1780) united the tribes that had previously been loosely linked to form a kingdom. The Ambomu, under the rule of the Avongara, began expanding south and east. Different ethnicities were subjected; some were able to retain their language, while others were fully assimilated . The Azande emerged from this mixture of different ethnic groups. The Azande had an efficient system to integrate new races. Boys were brought to the court of rulers when they reached puberty , where they first became servants and later became armed followers. When they returned to their villages after years to get married, they saw themselves as Azande. So in a few generations a new nation was built.

The Azande political system allowed for rapid expansion without a central leadership. The members of the Avongara forged their own kingdoms, resulting in frequent wars between the various kingdoms. The divided kingdoms were again unable to defend themselves against the Sudanese traders. Even before the 19th century, there were trade relations with Arab traders who were active on the Nile . The Europeans first encountered the Azande in what is now South Sudan in the mid-19th century. The Azande had long been in the ivory and slave trade with Arabs and Egyptians at the time. The Azande in what is now the Central African Republic lived in the Sultanate of Rafai, which they founded . The United Kingdom and France conquered the Azande militarily in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. In 1885 the Congo Free State was established . France colonized the Ubangi-Shari area (today's Central African Republic) in 1894. The Azande king Gbudwe was defeated militarily by the British in 1905 and Sudan was placed under Anglo-Egyptian rule. The British banned the slave trade, which meant the loss of important income for the Azande. These circumstances ended the Azande's expansion and undermined their society. In the 1920s, Sudan's azande were relocated on a large scale from the riverbanks to the streets. On the one hand, this action was economically motivated, and the people were to be protected from the tsetse flies that live on the river bank and transmit sleeping sickness , and on the other hand, police control over the unrest region was to be improved. The “Zande Scheme” program followed in 1943, which completely converted the traditionally diverse self-sufficiency with food to cotton cultivation. The Azande traditionally practiced agriculture ( corn , millet , cassava , pineapple , bananas , mangoes , peanuts ), but because of the tsetse flies no cattle farming ; They covered their meat needs by hunting . The income from the sale of cotton was supposed to be used to buy groceries and utensils. The conversion was accompanied by relocations near the cotton plantations, with the result that much of the traditional Azande way of life has disappeared. After gaining independence in Sudan, Zaire and the Central African Republic, the Azande were affected by the civil wars that broke out there. In the first civil war in South Sudan , the Azande supported the rebel movement Anya-Nya , which fought for the autonomy or independence of the south. In the second civil war, however, their relationship with the Dinka-dominated rebel army SPLA was rather distant. Many Azande fled the fighting in the Central African Republic and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Culture

Most of the azande are of a traditional religion and believe in witchcraft and magic. Magic and witchcraft represent an important part of their life and understanding of life for the Azande. In the 19th century, Georg Schweinfurth spread the opinion that the Azande were cannibals.

The Azande are known for their multi-bladed throwing irons and sickle weapons . Primitive money in the form of blades was mainly used as bride money . Artistic products are human figures carved out of wood, as well as the more abstract "Yanda" figures, which serve religious purposes.

  • Throwing iron

  • Sickle weapon

  • Primitive money

  • Yanda figure

Origin of the name

Azande translates as people who own a lot of land and refers to their history as conquerors who previously ruled large parts of what is now Sudan .

The name Niam-Niam was often used by strangers in the 19th and early 20th centuries and is believed to come from the Dinka language . Niam-Niam means something like great eater, but is now regarded as pejorative and should therefore no longer be used.

literature

  • Edward E. Evans-Pritchard : Witchcraft, Oracles, and Magic among the Zande. Faber and Faber, London 1937. Abridged version: Witchcraft, oracles and magic among the Zande. Suhrkamp Verlag, Frankfurt 1978
  • Edward E. Evans-Pritchard: The Azande: History and Political Institutions. Clarendon Press, Oxford 1971
  • Edward E. Evans-Pritchard: Zande Cannibalism . In: The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, Vol. 90, No. 2, July-December 1960, pp. 238-258
  • EE Evans-Pritchard: The Ethnic Composition of the Azande of Central Africa . In: Anthropological Quarterly , Vol. 31, No. 4 (Oct. 1958), pp. 95–118, recaa.mmsh.univ-aix.fr (PDF)
  • Paola Ivanov: Cannibals, Warriors, Conquerors, and Colonizers: Western Perceptions and Azande Historiography . In: History in Africa 29, pp. 89–217, Munich 2002
  • Manfred Kremser : Archetypal motifs in witchcraft and their culture-specific forms among the Azande in Central Africa . In: Mitteilungen der Anthropologische Gesellschaft in Wien Vol. 111, pp. 16–33, Vienna 1981
  • Manfred Kremser: Witchcraft ("Mangu") among the Azande. A contribution to the understanding of a Central African people . Vienna 1977
  • Niam-Niam . In: Encyclopædia Britannica . 11th edition. tape 19 : Mun - Oddfellows . London 1911, p. 635 (English, full text [ Wikisource ]).

Web links

Commons : Azande  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b c Jemie Stokes (eds.), Anthony Gorman, Andrew Newman: Encyclopedia of the Peoples of Africa and the Middle East , Infobase Publishing, 2009, ISBN 978-1-4381-2676-0 , pp. 76-78 books .google.de
  2. ^ Robert O. Collins: The Southern Sudan in Historical Perspective , Transaction Publishers, 1975, ISBN 978-1-4128-3484-1 , p. 12 books.google.de
  3. ↑ a b Zande. In: Encyclopædia Britannica . Retrieved February 12, 2016 .
  4. ^ Roland Anthony Oliver, Anthony Atmore: Medieval Africa, 1250-1800 , Cambridge University Press , 2001, ISBN 978-0-521-79372-8 , p. 157 books.google.de
  5. ^ A b John E. Flint: The Cambridge History of Africa . Volume 5. Cambridge University Press, 1977, ISBN 978-0-521-20701-0 , p. 266 books.google.de