Background
Heinrich Barth was born on February 16, 1821 in Hamburg, the third child of Johann Christoph Heinrich Barth and Charlotte Karoline Zadow.
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(The History of Bornu is an excerpt from a book written ...)
The History of Bornu is an excerpt from a book written by German explorer Heinrich Barth (1821-1865), describing his travels in Africa. Barth was born in Hamburg, Germany, but was fluent in several languages, including English, Arabic, and a number of Sub-Saharan African languages. He worked for the British government, and later travelled through northern and Western Africa in the 1850s. His fluency in Arabic and African languages helped him to establish relationships with local people and rulers. Barth was not the first European to travel through West Africa, but he was better educated than the earlier explorers and spoke local languages. These facts allowed him to collect local histories, which he included in the accounts of his travels that were published in German and English. Barths contacts and linguistic abilities allowed him to collect and translate oral and written accounts of the history of the kingdom of Kanem-Bornu. The kingdom possessed one of the longest-lived dynasties in Africa, one that may have persisted for almost 1000 years. The dynasty first ruled a kingdom northeast of Lake Chad in a region called Kanem. But attacks from hostile peoples led the rulers of Kanem to move their capital to the Bornu region, southwest of Lake Chad. The long-lived Sayfawa dynasty of Kanem and Bornu ended in 1846, but the Bornu Empire persisted under a new dynasty until its conquest by Nubian warlord Rabih az-Zubayr in 1893. Soon afterward, Bornu fell under British rule and was incorporated into Nigeria. The Kanem region, on the other side of Lake Chad, came under French rule, and eventually became part of the Republic of Chad. Today the Bornu region (now called Borno state) is part of Nigeria. The region has attracted attention as the epicentre of the activity of a militant group called Boko Haram, which threatened to seize control of capital of Borno State, Maiduguri, in early 2015. In Chapter XXIX Barth gives an account of Bornus history and rulers, based on information and documents he gathered locally. Many of the dates recorded by Barth below use the Islamic dating system. Islamic dates are marked A.H., while Western dates are marked A.D.. The cover image is of a Kanembu chief.
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Heinrich Barth was born on February 16, 1821 in Hamburg, the third child of Johann Christoph Heinrich Barth and Charlotte Karoline Zadow.
Barth showed remarkable linguistic skill and learned English, French, Spanish, Italian, Arabic, and several African languages. From 1832 he attended the Gelehrtenschule des Johanneums, a gymnasium in Hamburg. In 1839 he entered the University of Berlin, where he attended courses given by Karl Ritter, August Böckh and Jakob Grimm. In 1844 he defended his doctoral thesis on the trade relations of ancient Corinth.
From 1845 to 1847 Barth visited most of the Mediterranean countries and then decided to pursue an academic career. Starting as an unsalaried university lecturer, he proved to be unpopular with his associates and a poor teacher and was forced to cancel his classes. Meanwhile, James Richardson was assembling the English Mixed Scientific and Commercial Expedition to establish trans-Saharan communications with the banks of the Niger for commercial reasons, to help stop the slave trade, and to collect historical, geographical, and scientific information. Needing scientists, he accepted Barth, and they were joined by Dr. Adolf Overweg, also from Hamburg.
They set out for the Sudan, crossing the Sahara Desert from Tripoli. Near Lake Chad, Barth and Overweg parted from Richardson because of disagreements. Richardson died in March 1851 and Overweg in September 1852, leaving Barth to complete the expedition. Barth traveled in the central and western Sudan, and when his contacts with Britain were severed, he was presumed to be dead or lost. But Barth had become fascinated with African life and was carrying on a systematic study of the Sudan. In unknown areas he carefully recorded local languages, histories, and trading patterns and described the social and administrative structure of African kingdoms.
Barth's trip to Timbuktu confirmed the reports of the French explorer René Caillié, and Barth's exploration on the upper Benue confirmed that the Benue empties into the Niger and that the Shari empties into Lake Chad. He did extensive work in linguistics, including the compiling of vocabularies for 40 African languages in the Lake Chad area. In 1855 he crossed the Sahara to Tripoli and returned to England in September. Barth published a five-volume account (1857 - 1858) of his years in the Sudan, which was of immense value and interest to serious students of Africa but considered dull by most of the reading public. He died in Berlin on November 25, 1865.
Barth's maps and writings gave more complete information on the Sahara and Sudan than had previously been available. In history he discovered fragments of the Tarikh es Sudan (History of the Sudan) and the Diwan (History of the Kingdom of Bornu) and wrote about the decline of the Fulani empire. His four large volumes, Reisen und Entdeckungen in Nord- und Central-Afrika in den Jahren 1849 bis 1855, remain one of the most comprehensive works on the area and contain an immense amount of anthropological, historical, and linguistic information as well as the daily travel details he so assiduously recorded. His work was honoured and rewarded financially by the British government.
(The History of Bornu is an excerpt from a book written ...)
( This work has been selected by scholars as being cultur...)
(This Elibron Classics book is a facsimile reprint of a 18...)
