When Ritchie landed at Tripoli in October 1818 he soon learned how weak his situation was. The idea of a scheduled caravan service to Timbuctoo was laughable. True, caravans did go there occasionally, but the route was long and hazardous, passing through deserts which were ruled by predatory Tuareg tribesmen. The only caravans which left for the interior at even remotely regular intervals were those organized by the Pasha's vassal to the south, the Bey of Fezzan, who gathered an annual levy of slaves from Bornu, an African kingdom some 1,000 miles east of Timbuctoo.
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| African slaves in Iran during the Qajar era were often eunuchs. Their dress suggests that they belonged to the king or high-ranking members of his court. From right: Aqay-i ‘Almas khan, Aqay-i Bahram khan, Aqay-i Masrur, Aqay-i A Seyid Mustafa, Aqay-i Iqbal khan, and Aqay-i Yaqut khan (different person from other photo), 1880s Photograph: Kimia Foundation |
...Lyon asserted that any future expeditions would have to go native if they were to have any chance of success. 'We found that it was absolutely requisite to conform to all the duties of the Mohammedan religion, as well as to assume their dress.' Had they not done so, he continued, 'our lives would have been in constant jeopardy'. 'I am confident', he concluded, 'that it would never be possible for any man to pass through Africa unless in every respect he qualified himself to appear as a Mohammedan; and should I myself return to that country, I would not be accompanied by any one who would refuse to observe these precautions. It is possible, that as far as Fezzan, a traveller might, by great good chance, escape detection; but the further south he proceeded, the more bigoted would he find the people, and a cruel death would, in such a case, inevitably terminate his journey.'
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On 4 February 1823, sixty-eight days after leaving Murzouk, they reached the great expanse of Lake Chad, 'glowing with the golden rays of the sun'.
....As they travelled around the lake, heading for Kuka, the region's capital, they wondered at the man who ruled this Arcadia. He was probably a simple chap, they decided, who would receive them 'under a tree, surrounded by just a few naked slaves.'
On 17 February Denham was riding ahead of the others when he found his way blocked 'by a body of several thousand cavalry, dawn up in a line and extending right and left as far as I could see'. They moved in with 'an appearance of tact and management in their movements which astonished me'. As they drew closer Denham saw that some were clad head to knee in chain mail, while others wore metal helmets. Their horses also wore armour of iron, brass and silver. This disciplined and well-armed formation, moving without noise or confusion, could have been plucked straight from a history of the Crusades. It belonged to Sheikh Mohammed El Kanemi, the ruler of Bornu.
....When news broke that Kanemi was commandeering their escort for a slave raid to the south Denham stormed that they would have to tie him up in chains if they wanted to stop him going. He raged that he 'dare not lose such an opportunity of seeing the country'. This outburst coupled with El Kanemi's sudden recall that the Pasha was holding one of his wives and three of his children hostage in Murzouk against his good behaviour, had the desired effect
....Denham left Kuka as the sole European in an army that swelled as it marched through the countryside to more than 3,000. It was not a happy experience. Conditions were 'almost insupportable'. The temperature reached 113 F in the shade and flies swarmed round him so thickly that 'my hands and eyes were so swelled that I could scarcely hold a pen, or see or use one. His travelling companions were unfriendly. On the first evening the Muslim commanders let out a 'general groan' on learning that they had been eating with a Christian, and thereafter treated him with suspicion and contempt. ... At one stop he was informed that the people had heard of Christians 'as the worst people in the world, and probably, until they saw me, scarcely believed them to be human'.
....Even when he tried to follow Arab customs he was rejected as an impostor. On approaching the town of Mora, for example, he accompanied his group in the traditional greeting of riding as furiously as possible at the main gate and then skidding to a halt as close as they dared. 'This is a perilous sort of salutation', he wrote, 'but nothing must stop you; and it is seldom made except at the expense of one or more lives'. On this occasion they rode over an innocent bystander, killing him in an instant and breaking a horse's leg.
....The local sultan, a small man with a dyed sky-blue beard, was duly impressed by the display and greeted Denham courteously, but on hearing that he was a Christian refused to have anything more to do with him. Everywhere Denham went it was the same. At one stop he had his food bowl snatched away from him, to be replaced with a separate one, lest believers be contaminated by contact with the infidel.
....Shortly after the uncomfortable interlude at Mora, the raiding party reached its target, the district of Mandara. The Africans whom the Bornu men had selected to be driven in helpless droves back to Tripoli proved uncomfortably defiant. El Kanemi's troops were greeted with six-foot-high palisades, showers of poisoned arrows and massive boulders that were rolled onto their heads from the surrounding hills. They fled, pursued by their would-be victims. One man fell to the ground with five arrows protruding from his head. Denham himself received a graze to the cheek, and rode off with two arrows sticking through his headdress.
In the rout Denham became separated from the main body and his horse was shot from beneath him. He would have been killed instantly had not the pursuing tribesmen stripped him and started arguing over his clothes. As he wrote, 'My hopes of life were too faint to deserve the name.' But while his captors were squabbling over their catch he slipped beneath a horse's belly and fled into the forest. Naked, he sped through the trees, scrambling over thorny thickets, plunging through rivers, dodging leopards and venomous serpents, until he finally made his way back to the Bornu army, most of whom were by now succumbing to their poisoned wounds, blood steaming from their noses and mouths.
From: Barrow's Boys, The Original Extreme Adenturers, by Fergus Fleming
All the above aside, in 1853, the intrepid adventurer and British explorer Sir Richard Burton, who had immersed himself intellectually in Arab and Islamic history, became proficient in Arabic, knew the requisite Muslim customs, disguised himself by darkening his face, donning, Arab clothing and boldly entered Mecca, the Islamic holy of holies, strictly off limits at point of death to non-Muslims. And it was he, who set out with another British explorer, John Haning Speke, to discover the source of the Nile, the elusive goal that escaped detection for fifty years of previous British explorations.
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| Sir Richard Burton |
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