Luwu Regency

Luwu Regency (Kabupaten Luwu in Indonesian) is a regency of South Sulawesi Province, Indonesia. The administrative capital lies at Belopa, since the former capital of Palopo became an independent municipality (city) in 2006, at which date Luwu Regency was split into Palopo city, North Luwu Regency, and East Luwu Regency, with the residue remaining as the new Luwu Regency. The first Regent of the reduced Luwu Regency was H. M. Basmin Mattayang from 2004-2009, then Ir. H. Andi Mudzakkar replaced him as Regent from 2009-2014 following the first direct election in Luwu. Luwu is well known for its natural resources, such as rice, cocoa, coconut, banana, sagu (sago), rambutan, langsat, and others.

History

Luwu is named after the Luwu Kingdom, one of the three biggest kingdoms (and the oldest one) in South Sulawesi; the two kingdoms were Gowa-Tallo (which became Gowa Regency and Makassar) and Bone (which became Bone Regency). The name "Luwu" had been known from the 13th century when the first king of the Lontara period of Luwu was throned. In Luwu history, there are two periods; the Galigo period and the Lontara period.

Luwu

The Kingdom of Luwu (also Luwuq or Wareq) is the oldest kingdom in South Sulawesi. In 1889, the Dutch Governor of Makassar placed Luwu’s heyday between the 10th and 14th centuries, but offered no evidence. The La Galigo, an epic poem in an archaic form of the Bugis language, is the likely source of Braam Morris’ dating. The La Galigo depicts a vaguely defined world of coastal and riverine kingdoms whose economies are based on trade. The important centers of this world are Luwu and the kingdom of Cina (pronounced Cheena but identical in Indonesian pronunciation to China), which lay in the western Cenrana valley, with its palace centre near the hamlet of Sarapao in Pamanna district. The incompatibility of the La Galigo’s society and political economy with the reality of the Bugis agricultural kingdoms led Bugis historians to propose an intervening period of chaos to separate the two chronologically.

Archaeological and textual research carried out since the 1980s has undermined this chronology. Extensive surveys and excavations in Luwu have revealed that it is no older than the earliest agricultural kingdoms of the southwest peninsula. The new understanding is that Bugis speaking settlers from the western Cénrana valley began to settle along the coastal margins around the year 1300. The Gulf of Bone is not a Bugis-speaking area: it is a thinly populated region of great ethnic diversity. Speakers of Pamona, Padoe, Toala, Wotu and Lemolang languages live on the coastal lowlands and foothills, while the highland valleys are home to groups speaking various other Central and South Sulawesi languages. The Bugis are found almost solely along the coast, to which they have evidently migrated in order to trade with Luwu’s indigenous peoples. It is clear both from archaeological and textual sources that Luwu was a Bugis-led coalition of various ethnic groups, united by trading relationships.