Tibesti, Borku, Wadai and Darfur

Gustav Nachtigal · 1869 CE – 1874 CE · Earth

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, where the German traveller Eduard Vogel had been killed. Nachtigal set out with a king’s presents for Bornu and simply kept going east, year after year, living on the Bornu sheikh’s generosity and on merchants’ loans, and treating the sick as he went. He came out at El Obeid in August 1874, the first European to have left Wadai alive, and reached Khartoum that winter.

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

   August 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, then Bagirmi

   1871 CE

   In 1871 he reaches Borku with Arab raiders but cannot enter Ennedi; in 1872 he joins the war camp of Bagirmi’s king, driven from his capital.

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

   March 1874

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

Outcome

Crossed Tibesti, Kawar, Borku, Bagirmi, Wadai, Darfur and Kordofan, reaching El Obeid in August 1874 and Khartoum that winter, 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.

Read on Wikipedia

Sources

• Gustav Nachtigal — Wikipedia
• Sahara und Sudan: Ergebnisse sechsjähriger Reisen in AfrikaGustav Nachtigal · Weidmannsche Buchhandlung, Berlin · 1879

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