Tibesti, Borku, Wadai and Darfur

Gustav Nachtigal · 1869 CE – 1874 CE · Earth

Tibesti, Borku, Wadai and Darfur — Gustav Nachtigal · 1869 CE – 1874 CE · Earth — Recorded expedition route · schematic map

Deliver the Prussian presents at Kukawa and explore the unknown country between Fezzan and the Nile.

Historical context

The eastern Sahara was the last large blank on nineteenth-century maps, guarded by the Tubu of Tibesti and by the sultanate of Wadai, which killed the Europeans who tried to enter it. Nachtigal set out with a king’s presents for Bornu and simply kept going east, year after year, as a doctor paying his way with medicine. He came out at Khartoum in 1874 having crossed country no European would see again for forty years.

The voyage, step by step

  1. A king’s errand

    1869 CE

    A German doctor in Tunis is asked to carry Prussian gifts to the Shehu of Bornu.

  2. Into Tibesti

    July 1869

    He turns aside from the caravan road to enter a volcanic massif no European had seen.

  3. The Kawar oases

    1870 CE

    He crosses the salt pans of Bilma on the road south to Lake Chad.

  4. The gifts delivered

    July 1870

    In July he reaches Kukawa and hands the Shehu of Bornu his king’s presents at last.

  5. Borku and Ennedi

    1872 CE

    He works north-east into palm-filled depressions and sandstone plateaus never surveyed.

  6. Wadai

    1873 CE

    He enters the sultanate that had killed every European known to have tried before him.

  7. Darfur and the road to Khartoum

    November 1874

    He crosses the sultanate in the year Egypt destroys it, and goes on to Kordofan.

Outcome

Crossed Tibesti, Borku, Ennedi, Wadai, Darfur and Kordofan, reaching Khartoum in 1874 with six years of surveys and ethnography.

Gustav Nachtigal

German physician who spent six years crossing Tibesti, Borku, Wadai and Darfur, the first European to describe much of the eastern Sahara.

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Sources

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