Deim Zubeir

Deim Zubeir[1]
Uyujuku
Town
The old church in 2017 (from the ICRC Archives)
The old church in 2017 (from the ICRC Archives)
Deim Zubeir[1] is located in South Sudan
Deim Zubeir[1]
Deim Zubeir[1]
Location in South Sudan
Coordinates: 7°43′N 26°13′E / 7.717°N 26.217°E / 7.717; 26.217
Country South Sudan
StateWestern Bahr el Ghazal
CountyRaga County
PayamKuru
BomaUyujuku
Time zoneUTC+2 (CAT)

Deim Zubeir, from the Arabic ديم الزبير ["Daim az-Zubayr"], commonly translated as the "Camp of Zubeir", is the historically established but highly controversial name of Uyujuku town in the Western Bahr el Ghazal of the Republic of South Sudan,[1] located in the Western Bahr El Ghazal part of the country, some 70 km from the border with the Central African Republic (CAR), near the Biri tributary of the River Chel.[2]

Due to different transliterations from the Arabic, the name components are also spelled in various combinations Dem, Dehm, Deym, Dam, Daym or Daim, and Zubair, Zubayr, Zoubair, Zoubeir, Zoubayr, Zobeir, Ziber, Zebehr, or Zubier, respectively.

The historical remains of the slave camp have been designated a potential UNESCO World Heritage Centre site.[3] In the collective memory of South Sudanese people, the very name Deim Zubeir rings as a synonym for millennia of slavery,[4] at least since Pharaonic times.[5][page needed]

Stefano Santandrea (1966) had written a lexicon and grammatical sketch of the Mboto dialect of the Birri language as spoken in Deim Zubeir.[6]

  1. ^ a b c "Deim Zubeir, Sudan - Geographical Names, map, geographic coordinates". Geographic.org. 24 September 1993. Archived from the original on 16 September 2016. Retrieved 31 July 2016.
  2. ^ Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Bahr-el-Ghazal" . Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 3 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. pp. 212–213.
  3. ^ Regional Office for Eastern Africa, UNESCO (15 October 2017). "South Sudan overcomes challenges of ongoing conflict to designate potential World Heritage sites". UNESCO. Archived from the original on 16 October 2017. Retrieved 15 October 2017.
  4. ^ "Deim Zubeir – Slave route site". UNESCO World Heritage Centre. 4 October 2017. Archived from the original on 28 January 2018. Retrieved 18 January 2018.
  5. ^ Rex S., O'Fahey; Spaulding, Jay L. (1974). Kingdoms of the Sudan. London: Methuen. ISBN 0416774504.
  6. ^ Santandrea, Stefano. 1966. The Birri language: Brief elementary notes. Afrika und Übersee 49. 81‒234.