Background
He was born in Opole on March 28, 1840.
He was born in Opole on March 28, 1840.
As a child, he liked to travel. After training as a physician, he practiced medicine in Albania, adopting Turkish ways and styling himself Mehemed Emin Effendi.
In 1875, however, the lure of Africa drew him to Khartoum, where his medical work favorably impressed the British general Charles George Gordon, who secured him an appointment in the Equatorial province of southern Sudan, which Emin zealously explored.
Once Gordon had become governor-general of the Sudan in 1878, he arranged for Emin to succeed him as Equatoria’s Anglo-Egyptian governor. Emin, later known as Emin Pasha, conducted a sound and effective administration; together with Gordon, he devoted much time and effort to combating and eradicating the Arab trade in African slaves. As a doctor and linguist, he also became an expert on the peoples and natural history of central Africa.
The fall of Khartoum, in which General Gordon met his death in 1885, left Emin Pasha isolated and exposed to attack by the Mahdi’s dervish rebels. Although British and German attempts to rescue him failed, Emin held out for two more years and was the object of various relief expeditions until H. M. Stanley’s arrival in 1888. With much reluctance, he then accompanied the British explorer to safety in Zanzibar.
His next assignment, for the German colonial authorities in Tanganyika, was to explore and claim new territory in the Lake Victoria region of east Africa in 1890. This expedition he rigorously pursued, despite German efforts to recall him after a boundary agreement had been reached with the British. While on his return journey, in late October of 1892, Emin was murdered by vengeful Arab slave traders.
At the age of two he was baptized in a Protestant church, since his assimilated Jewish parents believed that this step would further his career.