The Sakuye are a clan of the Oromo people living in

Marsabit 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 east of the centre of the East African Rift at an elevation o ...

, Tana River, Garissa, Wajir, Mandera and

Isiolo Isiolo is a town in Isiolo County, of which it is the capital. It is located in the upper eastern region of Kenya and geographically considered the centre of the country Kenya. It lies 285 kilometres north of the capital Nairobi. The town grew ar ...

Counties, Northern Frontier District Region, now Northern

Kenya ) , national_anthem = "Ee Mungu Nguvu Yetu"() , image_map = , map_caption = , image_map2 = , capital = Nairobi , coordinates = , largest_city = Nairobi , ...

. The 1979 Kenyan census reported this group had 1,824 persons, but Günther Schlee believes this number "is definitely too low". The 1969 census gave 4,369 as their number, and the apparent decrease is not due to biological factors. In the 2019 census, they numbered 47,006. Because of their language and their inter-locking settlements, many Sakuye must have given '

Boran Boran (also spelled Buran, Middle Persian: ; New Persian: پوران‌دخت, ''Pūrāndokht'') was Sasanian queen (or ''banbishn'') of Iran from 630 to 632, with an interruption of some months. She was the daughter of king (or '' shah'') Khos ...

' when asked for their 'tribe' According to

Ethnologue ''Ethnologue: Languages of the World'' (stylized as ''Ethnoloɠue'') is an annual reference publication in print and online that provides statistics and other information on the living languages of the world. It is the world's most comprehensiv ...

, Sakuye is a dialect of the Afaan Borana language, though it has some significant differences. Their name comes from the name of one of the traditional divisions of Borana territory, Saaku, which is the area north of

. Thus, Saaku-ye means "from Saaku" or "of Saaku" in Afaan Booranaa. When a group of Rendille moved north from Marsabit, their Borana neighbors referred to them as the "Saakuye"."The Sakuye of Kenya"
,

The College of New Jersey The College of New Jersey (TCNJ) is a public university in Ewing Township, New Jersey. It is part of New Jersey's public system of higher education. Established in 1855 as the New Jersey State Normal School, TCNJ was the first normal school, or ...

History

The Sakuye are Muslims

Sunni Islam Sunni Islam () is the largest branch of Islam, followed by 85–90% of the world's Muslims. Its name comes from the word '' Sunnah'', referring to the tradition of Muhammad. The differences between Sunni and Shia Muslims arose from a disagre ...

. Following

Kenyan independence A part of Eastern Africa, the territory of what is known as Kenya has seen Homo (genus), human habitation since the beginning of the Lower Paleolithic. The Bantu expansion from a West African centre of dispersal reached the area by the 1st mill ...

, the Sakuye joined their Somali Cousins Somalis in Northern Frontier District Region now Northern Kenya in their attempt to secede and join the

Somali Republic The Somali Republic ( so, Jamhuuriyadda Soomaaliyeed; it, Repubblica Somala; ar, الجمهورية الصومالية, Jumhūriyyat aṣ-Ṣūmālīyyah) was a sovereign state composed of Somalia and Somaliland, following the unification o ...

. Most of their livestock was killed by government forces during the Shifta War (1963–1967), reducing many Sakuye to poverty. In the 1970s, a group of Sakuye moved to the Dabel hills, which lie below the Ethiopian plateau. The traditional

camel A camel (from: la, camelus and grc-gre, κάμηλος (''kamēlos'') from Hebrew or Phoenician: גָמָל ''gāmāl''.) is an even-toed ungulate in the genus ''Camelus'' that bears distinctive fatty deposits known as "humps" on its back. C ...

-oriented rituals, with a nominal Muslim affiliation, became much less important after the destruction of the herds and the Sakuye became Husayniyya, followers of the

Sufi Sufism ( ar, ''aṣ-ṣūfiyya''), also known as Tasawwuf ( ''at-taṣawwuf''), is a mystic body of religious practice, found mainly within Sunni Islam but also within Shia Islam, which is characterized by a focus on Islamic spirituality, ...

order founded by

Sheikh Hussein __NOTOC__ Sheikh Hussein is a town in south-eastern Ethiopia. Located in the Bale Zone of the Oromia Region, it has a longitude and latitude of with an elevation of 1386 meters above sea level. The Central Statistical Agency has not published a ...

whose tomb lies in the village named for him in Bale, Ethiopia.Günther Schlee
Kinds of Islam and policies of inclusion and exclusion: Some comparative perspectives from the Sudan and beyond
, Zum Abschlussbericht zum Projekt "Ethnizitäten in neuen Kontexten" für die Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, Projekt Nr. SCHL 186/9-1, Dezember 1999, pp. 2-3 Today the Sakuye population is divided between those in Dabel and those in Isiolo.

Notes and references

Languages of Kenya {{Kenya-ethno-group-stub