[2] Due to different transliterations from the Arabic, the name components are also spelled in various combinations Dem, Dehm, Deym, Dam, Daym or Daim, and Zubair, Zubayr, Zoubair, Zoubeir, Zoubayr, Zobeir, Ziber, Zebehr, or Zubier, respectively.

[clarification needed] Social groups were rather small and shifted frequently to avoid attacks from powerful neighbours who already possessed European weapons and forcefully expanded the trans-Saharan and Nilotic trading networks into the hinterlands for the exploitation of copper, ivory, ostrich feathers and slaves.

The Sudanese historian Ahmed Sikainga describes the impact that the Egyptian-Ottoman conquest of the Funj Kingdom in 1821 had on the lands of Dar Fertit as follows:"It represented the first large-scale efforts to draw the Nilotic regions into the expanding capitalist economy.

"[20][dubious – discuss] Zubeir himself later claimed in a number of interviews that the establishment of his rule was a civilising mission in the name of Islam and that locals flocked to him for life service because of the stable conditions he provided in contrast to their previous poverty and insecurity.

To survive, this parasitic community raided surrounding villages, stealing cattle and food crops and taking slaves not only for service in the zariba but also to work the traders' own farms back in northern Sudan and, of course, to sell to foreign markets.

"[27] The Russian-German explorer Wilhelm Junker, who visited Deim Suleiman shortly after Buchta, noted that:"Soliman Bey Ziber had undoubtedly greatly strengthened the place, especially in recent times.

[39]In early 1884, a joint campaign by Mahdist rebels led by Emir Karam Allah Kurkusawi, a former merchant,[14] and local Southern forces defeated the Turkish-Egyptian rule in Bahr El Ghazal,[40] almost one year before the fall of Khartoum.

According to the Austrian Rudolf Carl von Slatin Pasha, one of Kurkusawi's brothers had served as a commander under Lupton Bey and therefore managed to convince most of the Ottoman officers and troops to defect.

[41] Thus, the settlement was largely left to itself for almost one decade[43] and "reduced to an ill-presided collection of tumbledown buildings of raw bricks",[44] but was then all the more re-elevated to the global stage of imperialist competition around the "Scramble for Africa": According to Belgian records, it was a request in 1892 from Faki Ahmed, the Sultan of Wadai, for assistance against the Mahdist forces, which provided the occasion for the colonial strategists in Brussels to intervene for their "intention" to expand the Congo Free State up to Deim Zubeir, with the support of proxy troops from their Zande allies,[45] who had started pushing into Western Bahr El Ghazal already two years earlier.

[50] During the withdrawal, the Belgian officer Florent Colmant "wanted to satisfy a long-cherished wish of seeing with his own eyes Deim Zubeir", reached the place with some 80 troops on 24 December and left the next day:[51] "he only saw half-ruined houses of sunbaked bricks.

[62] Soon after his arrival Comyn ordered the construction of a new fort "to take the place of the one of green brick built by the French",[61] since the competition with the Congo Free State for control of Southern Sudan was not over yet.

From 1902 on, negotiations were conducted between London and Brussels, accompanied "by provocative incidents":[63] In this context, Belgium's King Leopold II ordered a "scientific" mission to Bahr El Ghazal under Charles Lemaire and Louis Royaux in 1902.

"[67] In his memoirs, Comyn defended himself against his contemporary critics as follows: "The hardship and discontent which arose was, I am sure, due to the fact that, in the neighbouring district of Wau, everything that was refused at Dem Zubier — i.e. rifles, ammunition, spirits, money, &c. — was freely scattered.

[70] In 1923, the Comboni Missionaries of the Heart of Jesus - also known as the Verona Fathers - moved to realise "a long-dreamed plan of expansion in the west" by preparing the grounds for the founding of a mission station in Deim Zubeir.

"[72] The government approval to found a missionary station on the Southern fringe of the widely islamised North-Western Bahr El Ghazal has been considered by Lilian Passmore Sanderson as reflecting "the hardening of official policy against Islam in the South."

While travelling outside the station by bicycle, especially to tend to people with lepers, he researched and published numerous articles in academic journals as well as a multitude of monographic books, most prominently his attempt of "A Tribal History of the Western Bahr El Ghazal".

"[12] Likewise, O'Fahey stresses with special regard to the Dar Fertit area that "the simplistic perception of the Sudan as a static mosaic of tribes each immutably living within its own little world is a travesty of the dynamic reality.

"[13] The British governor of Bahr El Ghazal, Thomas Richard Hornby Owen, observed during a visit to Deim Zubeir in the early 1950s "increased drunkenness, particularly among government officials and employees".

[81] During his studies of political science in the early 1950s at the American University in Cairo he wrote a number of articles on Southern Sudan for the Egyptian Gazette and is therefore also regarded as a pioneer of South(ern) Sudanese journalism.

[87] The Scottish journalist Cecil Eprile wrote in a book that the dead body of Albino Bambala, a schoolteacher in Deim Zubeir, showed marks of brutal torture, according to relatives who buried him in February 1964.

[89] In a similar incident, church circles reported that at the same time the catechist Baptist Mufighi, who had laid the foundations for the establishment of the Comboni mission, was tortured and killed by "Security" Police for suspected support of the Anyanya rebels.

The South Sudanese historian Scopas Poggo found through interviews with former Anyanya officers that unity among the rebel forces in Bahr al-Ghazal was only achieved in June 1967 under the command of Philip Nanga Mariik.

[109] Subsequently, those pro-Khartoum forces engaged in a military campaign to expel the SPLA from the wider area, which resulted once more in mass displacement of civilians not only to northern Bahr el Ghazal, but also to Western Equatoria.

"[120] A 2003 field-study of linguistics found that the Northern Lwoo language Thuri "is spoken by some 6000 individuals in small pockets in western Bahr el-Ghazal, around the towns of Deim Zubeir and Bora.

[123] In March 2011, shortly before the independence of South Sudan it was announced that the Western Bahr el Ghazal State Government had launched a Television station in "Uyujuku (Dem - Zubeir)".

[129] Soon after armed conflict between forces loyal to President Salva Kiir and militias of his political opponents broke out in South Sudan at the end of 2013, Deim Zubeir / Uyujuku and the neighbouring areas were once more affected by war.

The specialised news website also quoted a military intelligence officer in Wau as accusing "local people in the area of collaborating with armed groups by not giving them any information about their hideouts.

"[143] In its statement on authenticity and integrity, UNESCO added:"The chiefs of the community in the Payam are also involved in collecting information and data about the site, including how it was affiliated with the former inhabitants' lifestyles and cultures.

[144] In June 2019, UNESCO supported a field-mission to Deim Zubeir of South Sudanese expert Elfatih Atem, who is also director of a national non-governmental organisation, the Likikiri Collective, which has specialised in conducting oral history research.

Atem worked "to collect material evidence, photos of the landscape and narratives of slave trade and legacy of slavery at the site as part of South Sudan's efforts to justify its potential criteria for World Heritage listing.