Six years in the Sahara and the Sudan

Heinrich Barth · 1849 CE – 1855 CE · Earth

Six years in the Sahara and the Sudan — Heinrich Barth · 1849 CE – 1855 CE · Earth — Recorded expedition route · schematic map

Open a route from Tripoli to Lake Chad, survey the central Sudan and report on its trade.

Historical context

Britain wanted a treaty route from Tripoli to Lake Chad that would undercut the Saharan slave trade by opening legitimate commerce, and let a young German philologist join the mission if he paid towards his own expenses. Richardson died in 1851 and Overweg in 1852; Barth, the last of the three, went on until 1855, speaking Arabic, Hausa and Kanuri and, as he put it, never moving on without leaving a sincere friend behind him. He brought home a map and an archive: the chronicles and histories of the central Sudan as its own scholars had written them.

The voyage, step by step

  1. Tripoli, March 1850

    March 1850

    Barth, Richardson and Overweg leave the Ottoman port for Lake Chad.

  2. Murzuk in the Fezzan

    1850 CE

    The caravan re-forms in the oasis capital before entering the open desert.

  3. The Aïr massif

    1850 CE

    The mission becomes the first European party to enter the Aïr, and Barth maps its granite valleys.

  4. Agadez

    1850 CE

    He spends nearly three weeks in the town, sees a new sultan installed and describes its clay minaret.

  5. Kano

    1851 CE

    He reaches the greatest market of the central Sudan and stays to study its trade.

  6. Kukawa and Lake Chad

    1851 CE

    News of Richardson’s death meets him on the road; he reaches the Bornu capital alone and takes charge of the mission.

  7. The Benue at Yola

    1851 CE

    He crosses the upper Benue and concludes that it flows west to the Niger, not out of Lake Chad.

  8. Eight months in Timbuktu

    1853 CE

    Sheikh al-Bakkay shelters him while factions demand the death of a Christian.

Outcome

Mapped the Aïr, Bornu, the Benue and the Niger bend, lived eight months in Timbuktu and returned to Tripoli in 1855, the only one of the mission’s three Europeans to come home.

Heinrich Barth

German scholar-traveller whose six years in the Sahara and the Sudan produced the most reliable European record of nineteenth-century West Africa.

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Sources

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