Bugis

The Bugis people, also known as Buginese, are an Austronesian ethnic group—the most numerous of the three major linguistic and ethnic groups of South Sulawesi (the others being Makassar and Toraja), in the south-western province of Sulawesi, third-largest island of Indonesia. The Bugis in 1605 converted to Islam from Animism. Although the majority of Bugis are Muslim, a small minority adhere to Christianity as well as 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 in 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 Bugis descent. In Malaysia, the current 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, Toraja, Mandar and Massenrempulu. The name Bugis is an exonym which represents an older form of the name; (To) Ugi is the endonym.