 Rendille woman in colourful collar | |
| Total population | |
|---|---|
| 96,313 [1] | |
| Regions with significant populations | |
 Kenya | |
| Languages | |
| Rendille | |
| Religion | |
| Traditional religion, Christianity, Islam [2] | |
| Related ethnic groups | |
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The Rendille (also known as Rendille, Reendile, Rendili, Randali, Randile, and Randille [3] ) are a Cushitic ethnic group inhabiting the Eastern Province of Kenya. [4]
The ethnonym Rendille translates as "Holders of the Stick of God". [3]
The Rendille are believed to have originally migrated down the Great Lakes after splitting off from the Cushitic-speaking peoples in the Horn region, following wide population expansions by various Nilotic and Bantu ethnic groups. [3]
Traditionally, they have been nomadic pastoralists, tending camels, sheep, goats and cattle. [5] The camels were generally kept in the northern parts of their territory and the cattle in the southern section. [3] The Rendille traditionally practice infibulation. [6] This practice has its origins in Ancient Egypt which is well documented. According to Grassivaro-Gallo and Viviani, some people believe the custom was brought to the Horn of Africa from the Arabian Peninsula during antiquity. [7]
Also known as the ‘Holders of the Stick of God’, the Rendille inhabit the climatically harsh regions between Marsabit County and Lake Turkana in Northern Kenya. They are neighbors of Borana, Gabra, and Samburu. [8] Believed to have originally migrated down the Great Lakes from Ethiopia, they were forced towards Mount Marsabit because of frequent conflicts with other ethnic groups over pasture and water for their animals. [9]
Visually, the Rendille resemble other Cushitic groups with their facial features. As such they are quite distinct from the Nilotic and Bantu peoples of Africa. [10] Linguistically, the Rendille are closely related to Aweer. Culturally, they are the closest to Gabra who have similar ceremonial traditions. They are nomadic pastoralists, caring for goats, fat-tailed sheep and camels. [11] [12]
One widely told story of their origin is that they descended from Somali people and were once Muslims. [9] Despite it being one of the most dominant theories, it is also evident that this argument is only based on post-hoc explanations on shared linguistic similarities. [13]
Since they lived on desert land with unfavorable climatic conditions, the British colonialists were not interested in overtaking their land and the Rendille was, therefore, not very affected by colonial rule in Kenya. [14]
The first ethnological study of the Rendille was published at the turn of the 20th century by William A. Chanler. The study described the unmixed Rendille he encountered as tall, slender and reddish-brown in complexion, with soft, straight hair and narrow facial features. [15] Chanler additionally remarked that many of the Rendille possessed "fierce" blue eyes, [15] a physical peculiarity that was also later noted by Augustus Henry Keane (1900), [16] John Scott Keltie (1904) [17] and John Henry Patterson (1909). [18]
According to Ethnologue , there were approximately 94,700 Rendille speakers in 2006. [5] Most are concentrated in the Kaisut Desert and Mount Marsabit in the Marsabit District of northern Kenya's Eastern Province. [5] [3]
The Rendille people speak the Rendille language as a mother tongue (also known as Rendile or Randile (as referred to by the neighbouring Samburu). It belongs to the Cushitic branch of the Afroasiatic family. [5]
Additionally, some Rendille use English or Swahili as working languages for the purpose of communicating with other populations. [5] [3]
The Ariaal sub-group of the Rendille, who are of mixed Nilotic and Cushitic descent, speak the Eastern Nilotic Samburu language of the Samburu people with whom they cohabit. [5] [19]
Recent advances in genetic analyses have helped shed some light on the ethnogenesis of the Rendille people. Genetic genealogy, although a novel tool that uses the genes of modern populations to trace their ethnic and geographic origins, has also helped clarify the possible background of the modern Rendille.
According to an mtDNA study by Castri et al. (2008), the maternal ancestry of the contemporary Rendille consists of a mixture of Afro-Asiatic-associated lineages and Sub-Saharan haplogroups, reflecting substantial female gene flow from neighboring Sub-Saharan populations. About 30% of the Rendille belonged to the West Eurasian haplogroups I (15%), N1a (8%), M1a (3%) and R0/pre-HV (3%). The remaining samples carried various Sub-Saharan macro-haplogroup L sub-clades, mainly consisting of L0a (22%) and L2a (8%). [20]
The Rendille's autosomal DNA has been examined in a comprehensive study by Tishkoff et al. (2009) on the genetic affiliations of various populations in Africa. According to Bayesian clustering analysis, the Rendille generally grouped with other Afroasiatic-speaking populations inhabiting the Great Lakes region, with these lacustrine groups forming a cluster distinct from that of the Afroasiatic-speaking populations in the Horn of Africa, North Africa and the Sahara. This difference was attributed to marked genetic exchanges between the Rendille and neighboring Nilo-Saharan and Bantu communities. [21]
In terms of creed, the Rendille come from a practice of traditional religions centered around the worship of Waaq [3] denoting the monotheistic archaic pre-Abrahamic religion adhered to by Cushitic groups. [22]
More recently, the Rendille have come to adopt Christianity due to Christian missionary work throughout the 20th and 21st century. [23]
.
According to Spencer (1973), the Rendille are organized into an age grade system of patrilineal lineage groups (keiya), which are subsumed under fifteen clans (group). Of those, only nine are considered authentic Rendille. These Northern Rendille or Rendille proper are consequently the only ones that are included in the traditional Rendille moiety (belesi). The remaining six clans that are excluded from the moiety consist of mixed individuals. Five of those clans are of Rendille (Cushitic) and Samburu (Nilotic) descent. Collectively, the latter hybrid groups are referred to as the Ariaal or Southern Rendille. [19] [24] The Somalis draw a distinction between the "original" or "good" ethnic Rendille (known as asil), and the "bad" or assimilated Rendille ("those who speak Samburu"). [25]
We incorporated geographic data into a Bayesian clustering analysis, assuming no admixture (TESS software) (25) and distinguished six clusters within continental Africa (Fig. 5A).[...] Another geographically contiguous cluster extends across northern Africa (blue) into Mali (the Dogon), Ethiopia, and northern Kenya. With the exception of the Dogon, these populations speak an Afroasiaticlanguage[...] Nilo-Saharan and Cushitic speakers from the Sudan, Kenya, and Tanzania, as well as some of the Bantu speakers from Kenya, Tanzania, and Rwanda (Hutu/Tutsi), constitute another cluster (purple), reflecting linguistic evidence for gene flow among these populations over the past ~5000 years (28, 29).Also see Supplementary Data.
The demography of Kenya is monitored by the Kenyan National Bureau of Statistics. Kenya is a multi-ethnic state in East Africa. Its total population was at 47,558,296 as of the 2019 census.
The Maasai are a Nilotic ethnic group inhabiting northern, central and southern Kenya and northern Tanzania, near the African Great Lakes region. The Maasai speak the Maa language, a member of the Nilotic language family that is related to the Dinka, Kalenjin and Nuer languages. Except for some elders living in rural areas, most Maasai people speak the official languages of Kenya and Tanzania, Swahili and English.
The Nilotic people are people indigenous to the East Africa who speak Nilotic languages. They inhabit Kenya, the northern border area of Democratic Republic of the Congo, Rwanda, Burundi and Tanzania. Luo peoples, Ateker peoples, Kalenjin peoples, Karamojong people also known as the Karamojong or Karimojong, Chaga people ,Ngasa people,Datooga, Samburu ,and the Maa-speaking peoples.
Nubians are a Nilo-Saharan speaking ethnic group indigenous to the region which is now northern Sudan and southern Egypt. They originate from the early inhabitants of the central Nile valley, believed to be one of the earliest cradles of civilization. In the southern valley of Egypt, Nubians differ culturally and ethnically from Egyptians, although they intermarried with members of other ethnic groups, especially Arabs. They speak Nubian languages as a mother tongue, part of the Northern Eastern Sudanic languages, and Arabic as a second language.
The Maa languages are a group of closely related Eastern Nilotic languages spoken in parts of Kenya and Tanzania by more than a million speakers. They are subdivided into North and South Maa. The Maa languages are related to the Lotuko languages spoken in South Sudan.
Marsabit is a town in the northern Marsabit County in Kenya. It is situated in the former Eastern Province and is almost surrounded by the Marsabit National Park. The town is located 170 kilometres (110 mi) east of the centre of the East African Rift at an elevation of between 1300 and 1400 metres. It serves as the capital of Marsabit County, and lies southeast of the Chalbi Desert in a forested area known for its volcanoes and crater lakes and others.
Kenya is a multilingual country. The two official languages of Kenya, Swahili and English, are widely spoken as lingua francas; however, including second-language speakers, Swahili is more widely spoken than English. Swahili is a Bantu language native to East Africa and English is inherited from British colonial rule.
Ethiopians are the native inhabitants of Ethiopia, as well as the global diaspora of Ethiopia. Ethiopians constitute several component ethnic groups, many of which are closely related to ethnic groups in neighboring Eritrea and other parts of the Horn of Africa.
The Iraqw people are a Cushitic ethnic group inhabiting the northern Tanzanian regions. They dwell in southwestern Arusha and Manyara regions of Tanzania, near the Rift Valley. The Iraqw people then settled in the southeast of Ngorongoro Crater in northern Karatu District, Arusha Region, where the majority of them still reside. In the Manyara region, the Iraqw are a major ethnic group, specifically in Mbulu District, Babati District and Hanang District.
Harold Crane Fleming was an American anthropologist and historical linguist specializing in the cultures and languages of the Horn of Africa. As an adherent of the Four Field School of American anthropology, he stressed the integration of physical anthropology, linguistics, archaeology, and cultural anthropology in solving anthropological problems.
El Molo is a possibly extinct language belonging to the Cushitic branch of the Afro-Asiatic language family. It was spoken by the El Molo people on the southeastern shore of Lake Turkana, in northern Kenya. Alternate names to El Molo are Dehes, Elmolo, Fura-Pawa, and Ldes. It was thought to be extinct in the middle part of the 20th century, but a few speakers were found in the later 20th century. Most of the El Molo population have shifted to the neighboring Samburu language. El Molo also has no known dialects but it is similar to Daasanach.
Rendille is an Afro-Asiatic language spoken by the Rendille people inhabiting northern Kenya. It is part of the family's Cushitic branch.
The Konso, also known as the Xonsita, are a Lowland East Cushitic-speaking ethnic group primarily inhabiting south-western Ethiopia.
The Proto-Afroasiatic homeland is the hypothetical place where speakers of the Proto-Afroasiatic language lived in a single linguistic community, or complex of communities, before this original language dispersed geographically and divided into separate distinct languages. Afroasiatic languages are today mostly distributed in parts of Africa, and Western Asia.
The Gabra are a Cushitic ethnic group who mainly inhabit the Moyale and Marsabit regions of northern Kenya and the highlands of southern Ethiopia. They are closely related to the wider Oromo people and practice Islam and Christianity as their religion.
The Arbore are an ethnic group living in southern Ethiopia, near Lake Chew Bahir. The Arbore people are pastoralists. With a total population of 6,850, the Abore population is divided into four villages, named: Gandareb, Kulaama, Murale, and Eegude.
The El Molo, also known as Elmolo, Dehes, Fura-Pawa and Ldes, are an ethnic group mainly inhabiting the northern Eastern Province of Kenya. They historically spoke the El Molo language as a mother tongue, an Afro-Asiatic language of the Cushitic branch, and now most El Molo speak Samburu.
Worr Libin was an alliance of Cushitic-speaking population groups that inhabited various regions of northern Kenya and southern Ethiopia. It has been argued that the adoption of the Borana language by the other Somaloid Worr Libin groups reflected their acceptance of a regional Boran political hegemony. This period is thought to have lasted from 1550-1920.
The genetic history of Africa summarizes the genetic makeup and population history of African populations in Africa, composed of the overall genetic history, including the regional genetic histories of North Africa, West Africa, East Africa, Central Africa, and Southern Africa, as well as the recent origin of modern humans in Africa. The Sahara served as a trans-regional passageway and place of dwelling for people in Africa during various humid phases and periods throughout the history of Africa.
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