Tippu Tip

Based on descriptions of his age at different points in his life, it is believed that Tippu Tip was born around 1832 in Zanzibar.[1] Tippu Tip's mother, Bint Habib bin Bushir, was a Muscat Arab of the ruling class. His father and paternal grandfather were coastal Arabs of the Swahili Coast who had taken part in the earliest slave-trading expeditions to the interior. His paternal great-grandmother, wife of Rajab bin Mohammed bin Said el Murgebi, was the daughter of Juma bin Mohammed el Nebhani, a member of a respected Muscat (Oman) family, and a Bantu woman from the settlement of Mbuamaji, south of what would later become the German capital of Dar es Salaam in present-day Kigamboni District.[2]

Throughout his lifetime Hamad bin Muhammad bin Juma bin Rajab el Murjebi was more commonly known as Tippu Tib, which translates to "the gatherer together of wealth".[1] According to him, he was given the nickname Tippu Tip after the "tiptip" sound that his guns gave off during expeditions in Chungu territory.[3]

At a relatively young age, Tippu Tip led a group of about 100 men into Central Africa seeking slaves and ivory.[1] After plundering several large swathes of land, he returned to Zanzibar to consolidate his resources and recruit for his forces. Following this he returned to mainland Africa.[4]

Tippu Tip built a slave trading empire, and is considered the second wealthiest Muslim slave trader in history, using the proceeds to establish clove plantations on Zanzibar. Abdul Sheriff reported that when he left for his twelve years of "empire building" on the mainland, he had no plantations of his own. By 1895, he had acquired "seven 'shambas' [plantations] and 10,000 slaves".[5]

He met and helped several famous western explorers of the African continent, including David Livingstone and Henry Morton Stanley.[6]^{: Vol. Two, 91–97} Between 1884 and 1887 he claimed the Eastern Congo for himself and for the Sultan of Zanzibar, Bargash bin Said el Busaidi. In spite of his position as protector of Zanzibar's interests in Congo, he managed to maintain good relations with the Europeans. When, in August 1886, fighting broke out between the Swahili and the representatives of King Leopold II of Belgium at Stanley Falls, al-Murjabī went to the Belgian consul at Zanzibar to assure him of his "good intentions". Although he was still a force in Central African politics, he could see by 1886 that power in the region was shifting.

Governor of the Stanley Falls District

The contract signed between Henry Morton Stanley and Tippu Tip on behalf of King Leopold II at the British consulate in Zanzibar in 1887, in which Leopold appoints Tippu Tip as governor of the Stanley Falls District

in early 1887, Stanley arrived in Zanzibar and proposed that Tippu Tip be made governor of the Stanley Falls District in the Congo Free State. Both Leopold and Sultan Barghash bin Said of Zanzibar agreed and on February 24, 1887, Tippu Tip accepted.[7] At the same time, he agreed to man the expedition which Stanley had been commissioned to organize for the purpose of rescuing Emin Pasha (E. Schnitzer), the German governor of Equatoria (a region of Ottoman Egypt, today in South Sudan) who had been stranded in the Bahr el Ghazal area as a result of the Mahdi uprising in Sudan.

Tippu Tip travelled back to the Upper Congo in the company of Stanley, but this time by way of the Atlantic coast and up the Congo River. Aside from its doubtful usefulness, the relief expedition was marred by the near annihilation of its rearguard, a disaster for which Stanley attempted to place the blame on Tippu Tip.

Death

House of Tippu Tip in Stone Town, Zanzibar City

After returning to Zanzibar around 1890/91, Tippu Tip retired. He set out to write an account of his life, which is the first example of the literary genre of autobiography in the Bantu Swahili language. Dr. Heinrich Brode, who knew him in Zanzibar, transcribed the manuscript into Roman script and translated it into German.[8][9] It was subsequently translated into English and published in Britain in 1907.[10]

Tippu Tip died June 13, 1905, of malaria (according to Brode) in his home in Stone Town, the main town on the island of Zanzibar.

• Bennett, Norman Robert (1986). Arab vs. European: Diplomacy and war in Nineteenth-Century East Central Africa. New York: Africana Publishing Company.
• Elliot, Charles (1907). Preface. Tippoo Tib: The Story of His Career in Zanzibar & Central Africa. By Brode, Heinrich. Translated by Havelock, H. London: Arnold.
• Edgerton, Robert B. (2002). The Troubled Heart of Africa: A History of the Congo. New York: St. Martin's Press. ISBN 0-312-30486-2.
• Hinde, Sidney Langford (1897). The Fall of the Congo Arabs. London: Methuen & co. ISBN 978-1313986960.
• Maisha ya Hamed bin Mohammed el Murjebi yaani Tippu Tip kwa maneno yake mwenyewe, kimefasiriwa na W.H. Whitely (toleo la Kiswahili - Kiingereza), East Africa Literature Bureau 1974
• Oliver, Roland Anthony (2004). Africa since 1800. Cambridge University Press. p. 85. ISBN 0-521-83615-8. tippu tip mother.
• Sheriff, Abdul. Slaves, Spices & Ivory in Zanzibar: Integration of an East African Commercial Empire into the World Economy, 1770-1873. London, Nairobi, Tanzania, Athens,OH: James Currey, Heinemann Kenya, Tanzania Publishing House, Ohio University Press, 1987.

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