Tippu Tip | |
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Born | Hamad bin Muhammad bin Juma bin Rajab el Murjebi 1832 |
Died | June 14, 1905 (aged 73) |
Other names | Tippu Tib |
Occupation(s) | Slave trader, ivory merchant, explorer, governor |
Children | Sefu bin Hamid |
Signature | |
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Tippu Tip, or Tippu Tib (1832 – June 14, 1905), real name Ḥamad ibn Muḥammad ibn Jumʿah ibn Rajab ibn Muḥammad ibn Saʿīd al Murjabī (Arabic : حمد بن محمد بن جمعة بن رجب بن محمد بن سعيد المرجبي), was an Afro-Omani ivory and slave owner and trader, explorer, governor and plantation owner. He worked for a succession of the sultans of Zanzibar and was the Sultan of Uterera, a short-lived state in Kasongo, Maniema ruled by himself and his son Sefu who was an Emir with local WaManyema.
Tippu Tip traded in slaves for Zanzibar's clove plantations. As part of the large and lucrative trade, he led many trading expeditions into Central Africa, constructing profitable trading posts deep into the Congo Basin region and thus becoming the most well-known slave trader in Africa, supplying much of the world with black slaves.
He also bought the ivory from WaManyema suppliers in Kasongo, the capital of the Sultanate of Utetera, and resold it for a profit at coastal ports.
Based on descriptions of his age at different points in his life, it is believed that Tippu Tip was born around 1832 in Zanzibar. [1] Tippu Tip's mother, Bint Habib bin Bushir, was a Muscat Arab of the ruling class. His father and paternal grandfather were coastal Arabs of the Swahili Coast who had taken part in the earliest slave-trading expeditions to the interior. His paternal great-grandmother, wife of Rajab bin Mohammed bin Said el Murgebi, was the daughter of Juma bin Mohammed el Nebhani, a member of a respected Muscat (Oman) family, and a Bantu woman from the settlement of Mbuamaji, south of what would later become the German capital of Dar es Salaam in present-day Kigamboni District. [2]
Throughout his lifetime Hamad bin Muhammad bin Juma bin Rajab el Murjebi was more commonly known as Tippu Tib, which translates to "the gatherer together of wealth". [1] According to him, he was given the nickname Tippu Tip after the "tiptip" sound that his guns gave off during expeditions in Chungu territory. [3]
At a relatively young age, Tippu Tip led a group of about 100 men into Central Africa seeking slaves and ivory. [1] After plundering several large swathes of land, he returned to Zanzibar to consolidate his resources and recruit for his forces. Following this he returned to mainland Africa. [4]
Tippu Tip built a slave trading empire, and is considered the second wealthiest Muslim slave trader in history, using the proceeds to establish clove plantations on Zanzibar. Abdul Sheriff reported that when he left for his twelve years of "empire building" on the mainland, he had no plantations of his own. By 1895, he had acquired "seven 'shambas' [plantations] and 10,000 slaves". [5]
He met and helped several famous western explorers of the African continent, including David Livingstone and Henry Morton Stanley. [6] : Vol. Two, 91–97 Between 1884 and 1887 he claimed the Eastern Congo for himself and for the Sultan of Zanzibar, Bargash bin Said el Busaidi. In spite of his position as protector of Zanzibar's interests in Congo, he managed to maintain good relations with the Europeans. When, in August 1886, fighting broke out between the Swahili and the representatives of King Leopold II of Belgium at Stanley Falls, al-Murjabī went to the Belgian consul at Zanzibar to assure him of his "good intentions". Although he was still a force in Central African politics, he could see by 1886 that power in the region was shifting.
in early 1887, Stanley arrived in Zanzibar and proposed that Tippu Tip be made governor of the Stanley Falls District in the Congo Free State. Both Leopold and Sultan Barghash bin Said of Zanzibar agreed and on February 24, 1887, Tippu Tip accepted. [7] At the same time, he agreed to man the expedition which Stanley had been commissioned to organize for the purpose of rescuing Emin Pasha (E. Schnitzer), the German governor of Equatoria (a region of Ottoman Egypt, today in South Sudan) who had been stranded in the Bahr el Ghazal area as a result of the Mahdi uprising in Sudan.[ citation needed ]
Tippu Tip travelled back to the Upper Congo in the company of Stanley, but this time by way of the Atlantic coast and up the Congo River. Aside from its doubtful usefulness, the relief expedition was marred by the near annihilation of its rearguard, a disaster for which Stanley attempted to place the blame on Tippu Tip.
After his tenure as governor, the Congo–Arab War broke out. Both sides fought with armies consisting mostly of local African soldiers fighting under the command of either Arab or European leaders.
When Tippu Tip left the Congo, the authority of King Leopold's Free State was still very weak in the Eastern parts of the territory and the power lay largely with local Arabic or Swahili strongmen. Amongst these were Tippu Tip's son Sefu bin Hamid and a trader known as Rumaliza in the area close to Lake Tanganyika.
In 1892, Sefu bin Hamed attacked Belgian ivory traders, who were seen as a threat to the Arab-Swahili trade. The Free State government sent a force under commander Francis Dhanis to the East. Dhanis had an early success when chief Ngongo Lutete changed sides from Sefu's to his. The better armed and organised Belgian force defeated their opponents in several fights until the death of Sefu on 20 October 1893, and finally forcing also Rumaliza to flee to German territory in 1895.
After returning to Zanzibar around 1890/91, Tippu Tip retired. He set out to write an account of his life, which is the first example of the literary genre of autobiography in the Bantu Swahili language. Dr. Heinrich Brode, who knew him in Zanzibar, transcribed the manuscript into Roman script and translated it into German. [8] [9] It was subsequently translated into English and published in Britain in 1907. [10]
Tippu Tip died June 13, 1905, of malaria (according to Brode) in his home in Stone Town, the main town on the island of Zanzibar.
The Emin Pasha Relief Expedition of 1887 to 1889 was one of the last major European expeditions into the interior of Africa in the nineteenth century. Led by Henry Morton Stanley, its goal was ostensibly the relief of Emin Pasha, the besieged Egyptian governor of Equatoria, who was threatened by Mahdist forces.
The Abushiri revolt, also known as the slave trader revolt, was an insurrection in 1888–1889 by the Arab and Swahili population of the areas of the coast of East Africa that were granted, under protest, to Germany by the Sultan of Zanzibar in 1888. It was eventually suppressed by a German expeditionary corps which conquered the coastal area.
The Luba people or Baluba are an ethno-linguistic group indigenous to the south-central region of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The majority of them live in this country, residing mainly in Katanga, Kasaï, Kasaï-Oriental, Kasaï-Central, Lomami and Maniema. The Baluba consist of many sub-groups or clans.
Manyema (WaManyema) (Una-Ma-Nyema, eaters of flesh) are a Bantu ethnic group, described in the past as powerful and warlike, in the African Great Lakes region of Eastern Africa and Central Africa.
Nyangwe is a town on the right bank of the Lualaba River, in the Maniema Province in the east of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. In the second half of the 19th century, it was an important Swahili–Arab hub for trade goods like ivory, gold, iron and slaves, remaining one of the main slave trading centres until the Congo Arab war.
People have lived in Zanzibar for 20,000 years. History properly starts when the islands became a base for traders voyaging between the African Great Lakes, the Somali Peninsula, the Arabian peninsula, Iran, and the Indian subcontinent. Unguja offered a protected and defensible harbor, so although the archipelago had few products of value, Omanis and Yemenis settled in what became Zanzibar City as a convenient point from which to trade with towns on the Swahili Coast. They established garrisons on the islands and built the first mosques in the African Great Lakes Region.
Stuart Laing is a former British diplomat and was Master of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge from 2008 to 2018.
The Swahili coast is a coastal area of the Indian Ocean in East Africa inhabited by the Swahili people. It includes Dar es Salaam; Sofala ; Mombasa, Gede, Pate Island, Lamu, and Malindi ; and Kilwa. In addition, several coastal islands are included in the Swahili coast such as Zanzibar and Comoros.
Kasongo, also known as Piani Kasongo, is a town and territory in the Maniema Province in the east of the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
Ngongo Lutete was a Songye leader and chieftain during the late 19th century.
The Congo Arab war or Arab war was a colonial war fought between the Congo Free State and Arab-Swahili warlords associated with the Arab slave trade in the eastern regions of the Congo basin between 1892 and 1894.
Isangi is a town in the Tshopo Province of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, headquarters of Isangi Territory.
Muhammad bin Khalfan bin Khamis al-Barwani, commonly known as Rumaliza, was an Arab trader of slaves and ivory, active in Central and East Africa in the last part of the nineteenth century. He was a member of the Arabian Barwani tribe. With the help of Tippu Tip he became Sultan of Ujiji. At one time he dominated the trade of Tanganyika, before being defeated by Belgian forces under Baron Francis Dhanis in January 1894.
The Yeke Kingdom of the Garanganze people in Katanga, DR Congo, was short-lived, existing from about 1856 to 1891 under one king, Msiri, but it became for a while the most powerful state in south-central Africa, controlling a territory of about half a million square kilometres. The Yeke Kingdom also controlled the only trade route across the continent from east to west, since the Kalahari Desert and Lozi Kingdom in the south and the Congo rainforest in the north blocked alternative routes. It achieved this control through natural resources and force of arms—Msiri traded Katanga's copper principally, but also slaves and ivory, for gunpowder and firearms—and by alliances through marriage. The most important alliances were with Portuguese–Angolans in the Benguela area, with Tippu Tip in the north and with Nyamwezi and Swahili traders in the east, and indirectly with the Sultan of Zanzibar who controlled the east coast traders.
Sefu bin Hamid or Sayf bin Hamed was an Arab Zanzibari slave trader and administrative official. The son of Tippu Tip, he was killed while fighting in the Congo–Arab War.
Joseph François Lippens was a Lieutenant in the Force Publique of the Congo Free State during the Congo Arab War. He was killed by the soldiers of Sefu bin Hamid.
Henri-Auguste De Bruyne was a sergeant in the Force Publique of the Congo Free State who was sent to Kasongo in 1890. He was killed by the soldiers of Sefu bin Hamid.
The Sultanate of Utetera (1860–1887), also referred as Tippu Tip's state, was one of the Arab sultanates established in eastern Africa. It was a 19th century short-lived state ruled by the infamous Swahili slave trader Tippu Tip and his son Sefu. The capital of the state was the town of Kasongo, located in modern Maniema Province, Democratic Republic of the Congo. Tippu Tip's controlled territory reached as far to eastern Kasai and to Aruwimi Basin in the west.
Captain Jérôme Becker was a Belgian explorer and artillery officer who led several expeditions into Central Africa on behalf of the International African Association (AIA) and the Congo Free State, participating in some of the AIA's earliest explorations of Central Africa.
Stanley Falls District was a district of the Congo Free State. It covered most of the eastern part of the colony along the Congo River south from Stanleyville.
For two months Tippu Tip's caravan camped in Chungu's territory and punitive parties were sent out looking for Samu and his men. According to Tippu Tip this was the time he was given his nick-name because guns went 'tiptip, in a manner too terrible to listen to'.
tippu tip mother.
Media related to Tippu Tip at Wikimedia Commons