Tippu Tip

Hamad ibn Muhammad ibn Juma ibn Rajab ibn Muhammad ibn Sa'id al-Murjabi (1837–1905), known throughout his life as Tippu Tip, was a Zanzibari ivory and slave trader, plantation owner, explorer and governor who worked for a succession of Zanzibar's sultans. ^{1 2} He led expeditions deep into Central Africa, founded trading posts across the Congo basin, and came to rule a large territory in the eastern Congo in his own right while remaining a loyal subject of the Sultan of Zanzibar. ¹ His wealth rested on two trades that were joined together in the Zanzibar of his day: ivory, carried to the coast by caravans, and enslaved people, taken in raids and wars in the interior and sold to work the island's clove plantations and to buyers overseas. ^{1 3}

Tippu Tip was born on Zanzibar, probably in 1837, although the sources differ on the year: the English article's lead gives about 1832, and the Arabic biographical tradition gives 1248 AH. ^{1 3 2} According to Heinrich Brode, who based his account largely on Tippu Tip's own recollections, his mother, Bint Habib bin Bushir, was the daughter of a respected and prosperous Muscat family of the Wardi clan. ¹ His paternal great-grandmother, Mwana Arabu, was the daughter of Juma bin Muhammed el Nebhani, of a respected Muscat family, and an African woman from Mbwa Maji, south of Dar es Salaam. ¹

His nickname has two explanations in the sources. Sidney Langford Hinde translated Tippu Tip as "the gatherer together of wealth". ¹ By Tippu Tip's own account, however, the name came from the "tiptip" sound of gunfire during his expeditions in Central Africa — the explanation the Arabic article also gives. ^{1 3}

The Arabic biographical account, drawn from Al-Hilal magazine of 1906, says that at five his father had him taught reading, writing and the Qur'an, and that at twelve he borrowed twelve riyals, bought salt with them, and traded his way toward Dar es Salaam and the interior for months at a time. ³ At a relatively young age he led a group of about a hundred men from Zanzibar into Central Africa seeking slaves and ivory, raided several areas, and returned to Zanzibar to consolidate his resources and recruit more followers. ¹

Britannica dates his first trading trip to the African interior to the late 1850s or early 1860s, when he travelled with only a few men; by the late 1860s he was leading expeditions of 4,000 men. ² He established a rather loosely organised state in the eastern and central Congo River basin, ruling an increasingly large area through the 1870s, confirming local chiefs or replacing them with loyal regents. ² His main interests remained commercial: he established a monopoly on elephant hunting, had roads built, and developed plantations around the main Arab settlements, including Kasongo on the upper Congo River, where he himself settled in 1875. ²

His caravans gathered enslaved people for Zanzibar's plantations, and his expeditions bought ivory cheaply from local suppliers through the trading posts he founded. ³ The historian Abdul Sheriff reported that when Tippu Tip left for his twelve years of "empire building" on the mainland he had no plantations of his own, but that by 1895 he had acquired seven shambas (plantations) and 10,000 slaves. ¹ He met and helped several Western explorers of the African continent, including David Livingstone and Henry Morton Stanley, and in 1876–77 he accompanied Stanley partway down the Congo River. ^{1 2}

Between 1884 and 1887 he claimed the Eastern Congo for himself and for Sultan Barghash bin Said of Zanzibar, while keeping good relations with the Europeans. ¹ When fighting broke out in August 1886 between the Swahili and the representatives of King Leopold II of Belgium at Stanley Falls, he went to the Belgian consul at Zanzibar to assure him of his "good intentions". ¹

In February 1887 Tippu Tip signed an agreement making him governor of the district of the Falls in Leopold's Congo Free State; both Leopold and Sultan Barghash agreed to the appointment, and on 24 February 1887 he accepted the post. ^{2 1} He also agreed to support Stanley's Emin Pasha relief expedition with men. ¹ Britannica judges the position impossible: the Europeans expected him to keep all the Arab traders of the area under control but would not allow him the necessary weapons, and many Arabs resented his alliance with the Europeans against them. ² In April 1890 he left the Falls for the last time and returned to Zanzibar. ²

The war he had foreseen then came without him. His son Sefu bin Hamid attacked Belgian ivory traders in 1892 and was defeated by the force of Francis Dhanis, after the Congolese leader Ngongo Lutete changed sides; Sefu was killed on 20 October 1893, and his ally Rumaliza fled to German territory in 1895. ¹ The Arabic account adds that the Belgians seized Tippu Tip's property, estimated at 100,000 pounds. ³ The eastern Congo state he had built passed into the Congo Free State. ²

Tippu Tip retired to Zanzibar in 1891 and made no more journeys into the interior; he became a close adviser to Sultan Hamoud bin Mohammed. ¹ There he dictated the account of his life — the first autobiography in the Swahili language — which Heinrich Brode transcribed into Roman script and translated into German; an English edition was published in London in 1907. ¹

He died at his home in Stone Town, Zanzibar. The sources divide on the day and the cause: the English article's body, following Brode, gives death from malaria on 13 June 1905, while its infobox, the Arabic and Urdu articles, and Britannica give 14 June 1905. ^{1 3 4 2}

This section presents differing assessments as the sources give them; they are not the museum's verdict on the man or his trade.

His own account. Tippu Tip's dictated autobiography presents his career from inside the Zanzibar trading world: caravans, alliances, wars and governorships narrated as enterprise and statecraft, the earliest life-narrative in Swahili and a primary source for the history of the region. ¹

The explorers. Livingstone and Stanley both relied on him in the interior, and Stanley both proposed him as governor of the Falls and took his help for the Emin Pasha expedition. ^{1 2} European opinion of the period was divided by interest: the trading and colonial parties he dealt with treated him as a power to be negotiated with, while the abolitionist campaigns against the East African slave trade made traders of his kind their central target. ¹

Modern scholarship. Britannica's judgement is that the ivory trade remained his chief interest, and that his state-building and political intrigues served as means to that enterprise. ² Abdul Sheriff's study of Zanzibar quantifies the human basis of his fortune: no plantations when his mainland empire-building began, seven plantations and 10,000 enslaved people by 1895. ¹ The English article describes him, on that record, as one of the wealthiest Muslim slave traders in history, and the Arabic article names his occupation plainly as slave trader (nakhhas) before ivory trader, explorer and governor. ^{1 3}

• English Wikipedia, "Tippu Tip", revision 1379759374. ¹
• Arabic Wikipedia, «تيبوتيب», revision 75956254. ³
• Urdu Wikipedia, «ٹیپو ٹپ», revision 10152363. ⁴
• Encyclopaedia Britannica, "Tippu Tib". ²
• Wikidata, Q458421. ⁵