Bugis

The Buginese (Buginese: To Ugi, Lontara script: ᨈᨚ ᨕᨘᨁᨗ; Serang script: تَوْ أُوْڬِيْ; Indonesian: Suku Bugis), or simply Bugis, are an Austronesian ethnic group who are the most numerous of the three major ethnolinguistic groups of South Sulawesi (the others being Makassarese and Torajan), in the south-western province of Sulawesi, third-largest island of Indonesia. The Bugis converted from animism to Islam in 1605. Small minorities adhere to Christianity or a pre-Islamic indigenous belief called Tolotang. The Bugis, whose population numbers around six million and constitutes less than 2.5% of the Indonesian population, are influential in the politics of the country, and historically influential on the Malay Peninsula, Sumatra, Borneo, Lesser Sunda Islands and other parts of the archipelago where they have migrated en masse, starting in the late seventeenth century. The third president of Indonesia, B. J. Habibie, and a former vice president of Indonesia, Jusuf Kalla, are of Bugis descent. In Malaysia, the reigning Yang di-Pertuan Agong (King of Malaysia), Sultan Ibrahim and eighth prime minister, Muhyiddin Yassin, have Bugis ancestry. Most Bugis people speak a distinct regional language called Bugis (Basa Ugi) in addition to Indonesian. The Bugis language belongs to the South Sulawesi language group; other members include Makassarese, Torajan, Mandarese and Massenrempulu. The name Bugis is an exonym which represents an older form of the name; (To) Ugi is the endonym.