Burji (people)

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The Burji (also spelled Burği ) are an ethnic group in Ethiopia and Kenya .

The core area of ​​the Burji, which they inhabited alone from the 17th century to the middle of the 20th century, is in the southern part of the Amaro Mountains east of Lake Chamo . Administratively it belongs to the region of the southern nations, nationalities and peoples and forms its own Burji Special Woreda .

The Burji have a lot in common with the Konso , the speakers of Dullay languages ( Tsamay , Bussa , Gawwada ) and Dirasha , which is why these ethnic groups are also grouped together as the “Burji Konso cluster”. They live mainly from traditionally intensive agriculture, which includes terraced fields with artificial irrigation, intensive fertilization and collaborative work. There is also planning across generations. The most important crops in the northern part of the Burji area are ensete and barley, in the south wheat and sorghum species. In the north, which is in the highlands, there are widely dispersed settlements, while in the south there are compact villages and an urban settlement.

Traditionally, the Burji are organized into clans in an acephalic social order and have an age class system gadá , which is similar to the gadaa of the Oromo . The Burji language, the Burji , is counted among the Highland East Cushitic languages , but is also close to the Lowland East Cushite languages .

Since the conquest of their territory by Ethiopia under Menelik II at the end of the 19th century, numerous Burji have emigrated from their ancestral land, so that only a minority of them live there. Many Burji live in areas along the road from Addis Ababa to southern Ethiopia, northern Kenya, Nairobi and Mombasa . Marsabit in Kenya in particular forms a settlement center for the Burji. Therefore, among the Burji themselves as well as among researchers who deal with them, there is a debate about the extent to which the Burji can still be understood as an ethnic group, especially since they continue to form a “common ground”, but not a coherent “community”. In the 2007 census, 71,871 people in Ethiopia identified themselves as Burji, 56,149 of them in the region of the southern nations, nationalities and peoples , 11,918 in Oromia and 1,142 in Addis Ababa.

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literature

  • Herrmann Amborn: Flexible by tradition. Burji in Ethiopia and Kenya. Using the records of Helmut Straube / With explanation of some cultural items in English , Harrassowitz, Wiesbaden 2009, ISBN 3-447-06083-2