Black Ivory and White: The Story of El Zubeir Pasha — H.C. Jackson

Description

A gripping account of El Zubeir Pasha — the Sudanese slave trader who became one of the most powerful warlords in 19th century Africa. H.C. Jackson, author of Osman Digna, tells the extraordinary story of Zubeir's rise from ivory and slave trader to ruler of vast territories in Sudan and Central Africa, his complex dealings with the Khedive of Egypt and the British, and his ultimate fall. A fascinating and disturbing portrait of the slave trade in the Nile basin.

Excerpt

A tottering and uxorious old Arab occasionally pays a visit to his house at Omdurman, when he wearies of his husbandry at Geili, or is satiated with the delights and dalliance of Cairo. It is difficult to realise that this hoary veteran of at least eighty winters, this venerable, courteous old gentleman is the hero of a hundred hard-won fights, who conquered, and held, a country that was larger than France.

So far as I know there has never appeared in English an account of this old warrior’s achievements, and I have attempted, in what follows, to put on record the story of his life as he recounted it, in the year 1900, to Naoum Bey Shoucair.