page_title: Uele District
section_title: Pre-colonial era
hierarchical_section_title: Uele District / Pre-colonial era
context_page_description: Uele District was a district of the Congo Free State and the Belgian Congo.
  It roughly corresponded to the current provinces of Bas-Uélé and Haut-Uélé.
context_section_description: Peoples such as the Azande and Mangbetu migrated into the Uele region long before the Europeans arrived.
  The Ababua and most of the Azande live in the lower Uele, while the Logo and Bodo, and most of the Mangbetu live in the upper Uele.
  There does not seem to have been any strong connections between the Arabs or Nubians of Sudan until around 1860, when traders started to visit in search of slaves and ivory.
  Some of the local chiefs welcomed the traders, while others fought them.
  Arabic speakers in the region included Egyptian government representatives, traders, soldiers and Faqīhs.
  Some Azande worked for the Sudanese merchants or even visited Sudan, either voluntarily or as slaves.
  Some of the local chiefs became Muslims, and styled themselves sultans.
  The conversions were not always sincere, but some took the religion very seriously and abstained from alcohol, fasted during Ramadan, prayed and adopted Arabic dress. 
  Charles de la Kethulle, spent two years in the  Zande town of Rafaï, wrote in an 1895 article Le sultanat de Rafaï (Le Congo illustré) that almost all the inhabitants could speak Arabic, including the sultan, chiefs and soldiers. 
  The first Europeans to reach the Uele region were the German botanist and ethnologist Georg August Schweinfurth, who discovered the Uele River in 1870, and the Italian Giovanni Miani.
  In 1871 Wilhelm Junker (1840–1892), a Russian explorer of German origins, explored the Bomu-Uele region thoroughly.
  These visitors entered from the north or the east rather than the Congo River.
  In the 1870s the Egyptians decided to strengthen their control of the Bahr al-Ghazal and of the slave and ivory traders operating from there.
  Around 1880 many Azande chiefs placed themselves at the disposal of the Egyptians, who were represented by Europeans such as Frank Lupton and Romolo Gessi, in part to fight the slavers.
  The uprising of Muhammad Ahmad, the self-proclaimed Mahdi, against the Egyptian government in 1881 weakened the influence of the Arabs.
caption: Georg August Schweinfurth, an early European visitor
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