Shilluk Kingdom
South Sudan, 1490–1865. Draft, not yet reviewed
The Shilluk Kingdom, dominated by the Shilluk people, was located along the left bank of the White Nile in what is now South Sudan and southern Sudan. According to Shilluk folk history and neighboring accounts, the kingdom was founded by Nyikang, who probably lived in the second half of the 15th century. A Nilotic people, the Shilluk managed to establish a centralized kingdom that reached its apogee in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, during the decline of the northern Funj Sultanate. In the 19th century, the Shilluk were affected by military assaults from the Ottoman Empire, resulting in the destruction of the kingdom in the early 1860s.
Seat of power: Kodok
No rulers documented for this era yet.
Culture
- The monarchy (the Reth) has been political and religious in nature.
- Worship is performed in rituals inspired by the national myth of Nyikang, the first Reth. Seligman described the Shilluk form of government as a sacred kingship.
- Like most Nilotic peoples of South Sudan (such as the Nuer and Dinka), the Shilluk practiced subsistence semi-nomadic cattle breeding and some grain farming. Their social system was egalitarian, and the cattle herds had great symbolic value.
Picture
Kodok, formerly known as Fashoda, is a town in Upper Nile State, South Sudan, and the capital of Shilluk country.
Image: Unknown author, CC BY-SA 2.5, file
_-_TIMEA.jpg){kind=link}
Sources
Text adapted from the Wikipedia articles listed as sources, CC BY-SA 4.0.