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Translators' Introduction TRANSLATORS' INTRODUCTION Gustav Nachtigal, the author of this book, was born in Saxony on February 23, 1834. He became a doctor in the Prussian army, but retired very early for health reasons, and in 1862 settled on the north coast of Africa. During several years he lived in Tunis, where for a time he served as physician to the Bey. He acquired a fairly good knowledge of Arabic, and some understanding of Muslim thinking and institutions. When he was on the point of returning to Germany, towards the end of 1868, the leadership of an expedition to Kuka, the capital of Bornu, near Lake Chad, was unexpectedly offered to him. This opportunity, which promised to realise for him a boyhood ambi- tion to unveil the mysteries of Lake Chad, he eagerly accepted. The specific purpose of the expedition was to carry a collection of gifts which King William of Prussia planned to send to Umar ibn el-Hajj Muhammad el-Amin el-Kanemi, the Shaykh of Bornu, in recognition of the Shaykh's kindness to earlier German travellers who had visited his capital. With little delay, Nachtigal set out from Tripoli on February 19, 1869, with a party of five men recruited there, four Africans and a Genoese pastrycook, on a journey which was not to be completed until more than five and a half years later. European travellers in northern Africa during the nineteenth century commonly took Arabic names; Nachtigal called himself Idris. The first stage of his journey took him to Murzuq, the capital of Fezzan. Communications between Murzuq and Kuka were difficult just at that time, and the second stage of his itinerary was to be delayed for several months. Nachtigal took advantage of the leisure thus thrust upon him to embark upon a pioneering expedition into Tibesti, now part of the Republic of Chad, where no European traveller had hitherto penetrated. In Tibesti, Nachtigal's travels nearly termi- nated, for while he was virtually a prisoner there someone thought it might be a good idea to purchase both him and his pastrycook, as having interest as curiosities. The prospective purchaser was, however, ix X Wadai and Darfur not impressed with their potential as working slaves, and declined to offer more for them than one good strong camel.1 Returning safely to Murzuq, Nachtigal set out again, on April 18, 1870, this time for Kuka, joining a caravan under the leadership of Hajj Muhammad Bu Aisha. Hajj Muhammad, an envoy of the Governor-General of Tripolitania, had been entrusted with a mission to the Shaykh of Bornu on behalf of the Sultan in Constantinople. In Kuka, Nachtigal was well received by Shaykh Umar, and with his active co-operation he embarked upon further exploratory journeys, first to Kanem and Borku, and then to Bagirmi. He finally left Kuka on March 1, 1873, and his voyage eventually ended when, after traversing Wadai and Darfur, he arrived in Cairo in November 1874. On his return to Europe Nachtigal began the preparation of an extensive account of his travels, more than 2,000 pages in all, Sahara und Sudan: Ergebnisse sechsjährigen Reisen in Afrika. The first volume was published in 1879, and the second in 1881, both in Berlin. In 1882 he became German Gonsul-General in Tunis, just after the French annexation of that territory. He had plans for further exploration in Wadai and Darfur, the territories covered in the present volume; but these plans had to be abandoned when, shortly afterwards, he was appointed Reichskommissar for the German government in Cameroon and Togoland. He died in April 1885, off the West African coast, on his way back to Europe. The third volume of Sahara und Sudan, of which the present work is a translation, did not appear until four years later, in 1889, in Leipzig. Until 1967, when a reproduction of the original work was published in Graz, Sahara und Sudan was a rare book, and it is difficult to find a library in Britain or America which possesses copies of all three of the original volumes. Translations of a few pages or paragraphs have been incorporated in various books, such as Thomas Hodgkin's Nigerian perspectives, but there has been no English translation of extended passages, much less a complete version. The contributions which Nachtigal made, and may still make, to knowledge of the regions through which he travelled have scarcely received in the English- speaking world the attention which they deserve. A French translation, now very difficult to come by, of part of the first two volumes was published in Paris in 1881 ;2 and in 1903, when French interest in the area was becoming intense, there was a French translation, in a journal 1 i. 337-8; all such references without further identification attached are to the original German edition of Nachtigal's Sahara und Sudan. Cf. A. G. B. Fisher and H.J. Fisher, Slavery and Muslim Society in Africa (London 1970), 124 ff. 1 Tr. J. Gordault, Hachette (Paris 1881). Apparently only one volume of the originally intended two appeared; it is a condensation and rearrangement rather than a straight translation. Translators' Introduction xi also rare today, of the chapters in the third volume which are con- cerned with Wadai.1 The present English translation, which it is intended will ultimately include the whole of Sahara uni Sudan, divided, however, into four volumes rather than three, was undertaken in part as a corollary of the work of one of us, now a teacher of African history in the University of London, but more importantly as the project in retirement of the other - without any Regard either to Honour or Profit, but only to give myself a Harmless, Innocent, Scholar-like Divertisement in my declining years. As the first fruits of the project, a small volume was published in 1970, Slavery and Muslim Society in Africa, based intially on Nachtigal's evidence. Book VII, with which the present volume begins, opens with an account of Nachtigal's concluding period in Kuka, when, after return- ing from a six-month expedition to Bagirmi, he was planning for the journey home. Most of Book VII is devoted to Wadai, where he stayed for nearly a year, his departure for Darfur being held up by political uncertainties following the death of Hasin, the Sultan of Darfur. Book VIII deals with Darfur, where Nachtigal spent about six months. He passed some time also in el-Obeid, the capital of Kordofan, after his arrival there in August 1874 ; and was eventually despatched by Ismail Ayyub Pasha, the Governor-General of the Egyptian Sudan, down the Nile on a Jellaba, or slave, boat to Assiut, where he was met by a steamer sent by the Viceroy of Egypt, which brought him to Cairo on November 22, 1874. The published record, however, ends rather abruptly with his arrival in el-Obeid, and leaves unanswered several interesting questions about the final winding-up of his marathon journey. Together with an often highly interesting account of his own experiences in Wadai and Darfur, Nachtigal recorded much informa- tion about the two countries. His careful attention to history, political and social institutions and customs, even to local distinctions of race and colour, gives his book lasting and general importance : among the main themes which concerned Nachtigal, probably only his geographi- cal speculations have "dated" with the subsequent advance of know- ledge about the area. The range of his interests is considerable : medical details are not surprising from a trained doctor, but Nachtigal was equally scrupulous in describing matters as far apart as local vegetation and feminine hair styles. Religious matters are perhaps the only major 1 The translation, by Joost van Vollenhoven, appeared in the Bulletin du comité de l'Afrique française. xii Wadai and Darfur sphere in which the attentive reader will not find as much as he might hope in Sahara und Sudan. Before entering Wadai, Nachtigal had already built up a consider- able background of knowledge of that country, from conversations in Kuka with friends of his, in particular the Muallim or Faqih Adam, who returned to Abeshr, the capital of Wadai, while Nachtigal was himself there (pp. 123-4). Nachtigal stayed longer in Wadai than in Darfur, and made a six-week excursion in the direction of Runga to the south of Wadai. All this presumably made it easier for him to write a commentary on Wadai rather fuller than that which follows in Book VIII on Darfur. He established friendly relations with both King Ali of Wadai and King Brahim of Darfur, his friendship with King Ali even surviving cautious enquiries about the fate of Eduard Vogel, who had been killed outside Abeshr some seventeen years before. It was, however, difficult to eradicate the suspicions with which many of the leading men of both countries regarded a Christian intruder, and especially in Darfur he had considerable difficulty in finding repositories of oral tradition who were willing to take him into their confidence. That Nachtigal achieved as much as he did is in large part a tribute to his personal qualities. Another traveller, Karl Kumm, who was to cross the continent by a somewhat more southerly route about forty years later, wrote of Nachtigal as "without doubt one of, if not the most fruitful African explorer". With a wonderful amount of tenacity he advanced in his careful and cautious way, made friends as he went, left no enemies behind, and thus slowly passed from land to land until he reached the Nile Valley.... He never disguised himself as a Moslem, and his straight- forwardness and fearlessness gave him considerable prestige with the Moslem chiefs.1 Nachtigal's editor worked hard to produce a presentable version of the last volume of his book; but a number of obscurities and anomalies have survived in the printed version, lacking as it does the author's own final editorial touches.
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