Sidi Mubarak Bombay

And at the beginning of that original episode, I mentioned that it had been a bit since we had talked about any African history, and as I was on this little walk, I was like, Oh, that's true again right now. So today we are going to talk about Sidi Mubarak Bombay, who was sort of a combined guide, translator and nurse and often the supervisor of the African porters and other laborers who were part of expeditions through Eastern and Equatorial

Africa in the nineteenth century. He worked for people like Richard Francis Burton and Henry Morton Stanley, people who became really well known as explorers and over about twenty years he traveled more than nine thousand miles around the interior of Africa. In a lot of ways, these explorers really

would not have made it without him. One thing that I do want to note at the beginning is that these expeditions were purportedly about exploration and discovery, but they also lay some of the groundwork for the Scramble for Africa and the atrocities that followed that. This largely happened

after Sidi Mubarak Bombay's lifetime. When he returned from his last expedition in eighteen seventy six, only about ten percent of the African continent had been claimed by European colonial powers, but by nineteen fourteen that had jumped to about ninety percent. This is not something he necessarily could have foreseen at all, but some of the people that he worked with on these expeditions, like Henry Morton Stanley, were directly involved with it.

We talked more about this in our episode on George Washington Williams from February of twenty twenty four, and this episode really isn't about that, but I did want to acknowledge it before we got started. Sidi Mubarak Bombay was

born around eighteen twenty. He narrated the story of his early years to English explorer and army officer John Hanning Speake, who included it in his book What Led to the Discovery of the Source of the Nile that was published in eighteen sixty four, and at the time there was a lot of discourse around the role the knowledge of

Africans should play in European geographical writing. So periodical writer who covered these expeditions for a general audience in Britain and elsewhere in Europe, they usually dismissed the knowledge of

local people and of African guides entirely. They would characterize them as just ignorant or lying explorers themselves a lot of the time were more likely to acknowledge the local people's contributions as essential to their work and even to their survival, But at the same time their writing was often full of really insulting language and slurs. All of these books you can read on the Internet, and there is a lot of the in word in them. There's

also a lot of stereotypes. These accounts sometimes minimized or glossed over the contributions of African people when writing for the European general public. When presenting Bombay's account of his own life, Speak sort of countered this by vouching for it as quote, a good characteristic account of the manner in which slave hunts are planned and carried into execution. It must be truthful, for I have witnessed tragedies of

a similar nature. Here is how Bombay started this narrative, including a bit of geographical context from Speak, quote, I am Miao. My father lived in a village in the country of Uyao, a large district situated between the east coast and the Niasa Lake, in latitude eleven degrees south of my mother. I have but the faintest recollection. She

died whilst I was in my infancy. This lake is also called Lake Malawi, and it's along the borders of what's now the nations of Malawi, Tanzania, and Mozambique in eastern Africa, south of the equator. The Yao people of which he was a part, are a predominantly Muslim Bantu ethnic group whose homeland is around the southern end of.

else to stand the consequences of refusal. As all the residents had at different times contracted debts to different members of the body present, there was no appeal against the equity of this sudden demand, but no one had the means of payment. They knew fighting against firearms would be hopeless, so after a few stratagems, looking for a good opportunity

to bolt, the whole village took to precipitate flight. Most of the villagers were captured like myself, but of my father or any other relatives I never more gained any intelligence. He was either shot in endeavoring to defend himself, or still more probably gave leg bail and so escaped.

his death I obtained my liberation. My next destination was Zanzibar, where I took service in the late Umam's army and passed my days and half starved inactivity.

taken to India as well. As from Africans who made their way to the Indian subcontinent as migrants or traders. Mubarak is most likely a name given to him by his Arab enslaver. It's an Arabic name meaning blessed or fortunate.

educated in the Bombay Presidency. That's the western portion of the Indian subcontinent that had come under British control in eighteen forty three. Another possibility is that after slavery was abolished in India, people who had been trafficked there from Africa and their descendants became known as Bombay Africans. This name was also used for people the British Navy liberated after capturing slave ships that were operating in the waters

between eastern Africa and western India. After the abolition of slavery in India, many of these people returned to Africa aboard British ships, and a number of British explorers intentionally recruited Bombay Africans for their expeditions because of their time in parts of India that were under British control. They often spoke English, Hindi or both, and some had been educated by British missionaries while still having language and cultural

connections to parts of Africa. Over the mid to late nineteenth century, hundreds of Bombay Africans were part of expeditions led by explorers from the UK. So it's also possible that this Bombay moniker was a reference to his having been enslaved in India. This is just conjecture, though, since he was by no means the only person on these

expeditions that this moniker could have been applied to. There doesn't seem to be a record of Cidi Mubarak Bombay's name from before all of this, but he's mentioned repeatedly in the accounts of all the explorers that were talking about today, and they generally all call him some version of that name. Like Cdi Bombay or Mubarak Bombay or

just Bombay. Henry Morton Stanley calls him Cidi Barak Mombay, spelling Cidi with the y like seeds in the ground, Mbarak without the U, and Mambay with an M. But then he says that he's known as Bombay. Vernie Lovett Cameron included the name Barak Bombay in parentheses and his book Across Africa, But it does seem like the name Bombay was what he chose to use during his lifetime. So that is what we will go with today, and we'll get to his time doing expeditions after we pause

for a sponsor break. As he mentioned in the passage that we read from before the break, after about twenty years of enslavement in India, Sidi Mubarak Bombay was liberated on the death of his enslaver and he returned to Zanzibar off the eastern coast of Africa. That is where he met Richard Francis Burton and John Hanning speak in February of eighteen fifty seven. They were on an expedition funded by the Royal Geographical Society and Burton was trying to find the source of the White Nile.

as a nearly impenetrable mystery. Burton and Speke were returning to Africa after a failed attempt at an expedition in eighteen fifty five. On this earlier expedition, they'd been attacked in Somaliland and seriously injured, and one of the British officers with them had been killed. After they had recovered from their injuries and then served in the Crimean War, they had regrouped to try again once again, with Burton

leading the expedition and Speak his second in command. Burton had already undertaken numerous expeditions, including disguising himself to enter Mecca during the Hajj, and he had published several books. Speak had not published any books yet, but he was an avid hunter and had also traveled, including into the Himalayan mountains and Tibet. Burton and Speak both described Sidi Bubarik Bombay as someone they immediately recognized as necessary to

have on their expedition. Burton called him quote the gem of the party, and his description of him went on to say, quote, he works on principle, and he works like a horse, candidly declaring that not love us, but his duty to his belly made him work with a sprained ankle and a load quite disproportioned to his chatif body. He insists upon carrying two guns, and after a thirty miles walk he is as fresh as before it began.

He attends us everywhere, manages our purchases, carries all our messages, and when not employed by us, he is at every man's beck and call. Speak's account of him was pretty similar. At one point, Speak also described a misunderstanding between the two of them in which Bombay asked for some cloth, which was part of his pay, but he had already been given cloth Speak originally thought this was Bombay's quote

seedy nature coming through, but in Speaks words quote. Had Bombay only opened his heart, this matter would have been settled at once, for his motives were of a superior order. He had bought to be his adopted brother, a slave of the Waha tribe, a tall, athletic, fine looking man, whose figure was of such excellent proportions that he would have been remarkable in any society. And it was for this youth, and not himself, that he had made such

a fuss and used so many devices to obtain the cloths. Indeed, he is a very singular character, not caring one bit about himself, how he dressed, or what he ate ever contented, and doing everybody's work in preference to his own, and of such exemplary honesty, he stands a solitary marvel in the land.

Later on, David Livingstone described Bombay as having quote lifted Speak out of the disagreeable position of being a silent onlooker in all of Burton's conversations. Over time, Bombay also learned to speak English, Arabic, and Kishwahili. I'm not sure if Burton was doing this on purpose to exclude Speak.

back with the donkey to pick him up. Burton wrote about the huge relief that he felt when he saw quote ceed Bombay coming back with the donkey and some scones and hard boiled eggs. For him.

They thought this lake might be the source of the Nile, but it turned out that there was a large river that was flowing into it, not out of it.

seriously impacted his vision. Speak also had another mishap on this leg of the journey, in which he was swarmed by beatles in the night and one of them crawled into his ear and he permanently injured himself while trying to kill it. This gave me both the hebes and the geebses. That's way more graphic in the accounts of the trip than what I put in here. Somehow, though his blindness largely resolved after this, Speak Bombay and company eventually reached a lake known in Swahili as Lake Yukurewe.

That was on July twenty eighth. Speak dub this lake Lake Victoria after Queen Victoria. This is one of the largest lakes in the world and they arrived at the southern part of it, where they could not possibly see the other ends or any other waterway that was connected to it. Based on what they had heard from local people, though, Speak concluded that the White Nile emerged from the northern

end of this lake. When Speak and Bombay reconnect with Burton and told him what they'd found, he was not happy about it at all.

without him. This added to some lingering discomfort between the two of them that traced all the way back to that very first failed expedition, when Speke thought Burton was calling him a coward for how he behaved when they were attacked. There was just an increasing sense of resentment between these two men. After this point, the party returned to Zanzibar, and from there Burton and Speke returned to England, where their dispute over the source of the Nile became

public and quite ugly. Among other things, Speak got back to London before Burton did, and he told the Royal Geographic Society all about the expedition and his conclusions about the source of the Nile before Burton had a chance to tell them that he thought Speak was wrong. Burton was also less complimentary of Bombay than he had been

in some of his earlier descriptions. In his book The Lake Regions of Central Africa, for example, he describes Bombay this way quote, though he did nothing well, rarely did anything very badly. In eighteen sixty the Royal Geographic Society sent Speak back to Africa to confirm that he really had found the source of the White Nile. He and Scottish explorer James Augustus Grant arrived in Zanzibar that August. Speak and Grant already knew each other. They were friends

from their military service in India. Bombay was waiting for them at the dock, and once again they hired him. Grant's account of this expedition is called a Walk Across Africa or Domestic Scenes from My Nile Journal, and in

it he describes Bombay as their factotum and interpreter. When they set out, it was with a party of British officers and soldiers, local interpreters and guides, sixty four cedy boys or Bombay Africans, one hundred and fifteen locally hired porters, eleven mules, and perhaps not wanting a repeat of that situation where Bombay was having to ferry one available donkey between two sick men five donkeys to carry the sick.

On July twenty first, eighteen sixty two, Speak reached the place where the Nile River actually exits the lake that he had named Lake Victoria. He named this Ripon falls after George Robinson, first marquessov Rippon, who had served as president of the Royal Geographic Society. Grant was not with Speak when this happened. Grant had a leg injury and

had stayed behind along with most of their company. There's also some speculation that maybe he stayed by Hindes because Speak was kind of arrogant and did not want anybody else's claiming credit for this. Bombay, though was with Speak when he was there. He had led about a dozen Bombay Africans who supported Speak on this part of the journey to Speak. This was conclusive confirmation that this lake was the source of the Nile.

Kingdom of Bunuro. King Kuamassi of Bunuro refused their passage, though, and Bombay was the one who negotiated a different route that took them northward through Sudan instead. They ultimately ended this expedition in Cairo, that was thousands of miles away from where they had started. Speak talked about what happened to the Africans he had hired after this. In his book The Discovery of the Source of the Nile. He described them as his quote faithful children, and they became

known as Speaks faithfuls quote. I next appointed Bombay captain of the Faithfuls and gave him three photographs of all the eighteen men and three more of the four women, to give one of each to our consuls at Suez

Aiden and Zanzibar, by which they might be recognized. I also gave them increased wages equal to three years pay each by orders on Zanzibar, which was one in addition to their time of service, and an order for a grand freeman's garden to be purchased for them at Za Zanzibar, and in order that each one should receive ten dollars dowry money. As soon as he could find a wife.

With these letters in their hands, I made arrangements with our consul, mister Drummond Hay to frank them through Suez, Aiden and the Seychelles to Zanzibar.

of Africa. Would that I had listened to Bombay when at Zanzibar and had engaged double the number of his free men, for they do all the work, and do it as an enlightened and disciplined people. After returning to Zanzibar, Bombay settled on the island of Pemba.

a shot from his own gun while out hunting. The coroner ruled this death to be accidental, but some people, including Burton, believed that it was suicide, and there were also people who put the blame on Burton for purportedly driving Speak to it. Bombay was re heartbroken when he learned.

on to other things. One of the people who embarked on an expedition to try to conclusively determine the source of the nile was Scottish missionary and explorer David Livingstone, who was also an abolitionist whose work was connected to both spreading Christianity and trying to abolish slavery in Africa.

look for him. One of these was led by Henry Morton Stanley, who arrived in Zanzibar on January sixth, eighteen seventy one, and he hired CD Mubarak Bombay as his chief of caravan. Stanley wanted to hire some of the so called Speaks Faithfuls, and specifically to hire Bombay. He wrote, quote, the idea had struck me before that if I could obtain the services of a few men acquainted with the ways of white men, and who could induce other good men to join the expedition I was organizing, I might

consider myself fortunate. More especially, I had thought of Sidium Barak Bombay, commonly called Bombay, who, though his head was woodennee and his hands clumsy, was considered to be the faithfullest of the Faithfuls. They followed a similar route to the one that Bombay had followed with Burton and Speak, and just like on that expedition, Stanley's convoy had its share of challenges, including all kinds of illnesses and injuries

and delays. Initially, Stanley described Bombay as honest and trustworthy, but sometimes slow to act, but over the course of the expedition Stanley became frustrated with him. At one point they stopped at a village for almost a month because Stanley was ill and Bombay met a woman while they were there and didn't want to leave, so Stanley flogged him with his cane. Later on, Stanley had Bombay put in chains for failing to keep discipline among the porters

after a mutiny. But in spite of all of this, on November tenth, eighteen seventy one, the party reached Lake Tanganyika and they met up with David Livingstone. There is an episode on this reunion from previous hosts of the show, which we ran as a Saturday Classic on September twenty third,

twenty seventeen. The expedition returned to Zanzibar on May seventh, eighteen seventy two, and had some issues on this leg of the route as well, including one in which Bombay and one of the rowers got drunk and fell asleep, and while they were out cold, someone stole the gear from a canoe that they were supposed to be guarding. So they had gone out there to try to find Livingstone,

but Livingstone did not come back with them. He wanted to stay in Africa and continue his work, so a couple of years later, Vernie Lovett Cameron embarked on an expedition to try to bring Livingstone back. Like all the other people we've been talking about, Cameron thought cidium of Barak Bombay would be necessary to the expedition's success because of his previous experience and his status as chief among speaks faithfuls, But Cameron did not retain that opinion over

the course of the expedition. Bombay was about fifty three years old when they left, and Cameron wrote in his book Across Africa quote, he rather presumed on our ignorance, And we soon learned that, however useful he might have been in days gone by, he was not the best man to consult in fitting out an expedition, not having sufficient readiness and knowledge to advise us as to the

most serviceable things with which to supply ourselves. He had, besides, lost much of the energy he displayed in his journeys with our predecessors in African travel, and was much inclined to trade upon his previous reputation. But the high opinion we had formed of him at first blinded us to his many failings.

group Cameron later described as a motley crew. Cameron's account of their expedition describes a range of frustrations with Bombay, including his guiding them through a swamp where they had to stay overnight when a different path would have gotten them back to the camp they'd already established, and opening loads of goods in front of a chieftain who then wanted some expensive cloth from those goods that Cameron did not want to trade with him.

our ordinary daily expenses. It seems like Bombay might have thought access to cheaper food might make it a good time for Cameron to try to recover a little before they moved on. Also, While they were on the way to Lake Tanganyika to try to find livingstone, they learned that he had died. In spite of that, Cameron decided to press on and to explore the lake. This then turned into a trek all the way across Equatorial Africa,

all the way from Zanzibar to Angola. This took two years, and it made them the first party known to have ever done that. While Cameron seemed annoyed by the quote motley crew that Bombay had assembled for this, forty nine of the fifty four people who got to the Atlantic Ocean with them were people he had recruited and managed that whole way. On February eighth, eighteen seventy six, Bombay and the rest of the retinue were sent back to

zanzibard abort a schooner. A few months later, Bombay received a visit from the Reverend W. Salter Price, who approached him about an expedition to Uganda to establish a Christian mission for the Church Missionary Society. They embarked on a preliminary trip, but in eighteen seventy six Bombay was awarded a silver medal by the Royal Geographic Society. A number of the porters and other laborers who were part of these expeditions were also awarded bronze medals.

Vernie Lovett Cameron. And while these more well known exts floorers expressed a range of frustrations and foibles, it's pretty clear that they could not have done what they did without him, and without the porters, rowers and soldiers who he hired and managed. After learning of his death, Henry Morton Stanley wrote a letter to James Augustus Grant in which he said of Bombay quote, he had his failings, but he had also virtues. He was brave and manly,

He was faithful, and was incorruptible in a sense. He was a fine old gossip, delighted to talk of past days and old times seen at such a time. Bombay was a dear and even lovable man. And as I recall them, romance leads a charm to them and softens many asperities of my journey. Peace be to his old head. May his failings be forgotten and only his virtues remembered. And that is Ceedee Mubarak Bombay. Do you have listener mail?

chicken out. I just want to say thank you for the Dorothy Arsener episode. I'm always learning about fascinating people that I've never heard of from this podcast, but I wanted to send an email about this episode specifically because I work in the film industry. I grew up learning what I could about film history, and I went to school for film, but never heard of Dorothy Arsner, which

is a travesty. After learning about all of her contributions filmmaking, directing and teaching, even though she never received an award, and to learn that she taught Francis Ford Cope and with such an influence is amazing. I guess my very minuscule connection is that a friend of mine was able to work on his film Megalopolis that came out last year. So thank you Dorothy Osner for teaching Coppola. So my

friends could work on his films. I don't want to make this email too long, so I'll go ahead and wrap it up by paying the pet tax with some pictures of my cats. I have a black and white tuxedo cat named Dinah and a mixed Siamese cat named Olive.

long drive. Cheers, Katie. I might have said Kathleen and I kicked off the email, but Katie signed it Katie at the bottom. So thank you so much, Katie. Let's look at Oh my goodness, there's a kitty cat.

they relate to their behavior in later life. You know how people say like, oh, torties have attitude, and you know, well, yeah, which sometimes hold true and sometimes don't. But like, there are also interesting things that happen in terms of their position in the womb and how that impacts the receptors that do all of that. I'm talking kind of from memory, so hopefully I don't screw anything up. But you know, we have the example, we just adopted three sisters from

the same litter. They don't look alike.

contribut of the genetics, is often why litters look real different. Yeah, yeah, because a litter can have all different ads, all kinds. So Katie has sent a number of pictures of these adorable cats, and there are two different ones in which they are curled up together, and I super would not have guessed these cats were related to each other, not knowing this ahead of time. Incredibly cute. Thank you so much, Thank you so much, Katie. I am glad that you

liked the episode. Folks can email us anytime to say just hello. That is also totally fine, but I love the idea of sending the email on your phone so that you don't check it out. I have done similar things to make sure that I do a thing immediately, so if you would like to send us a note about this or any other podcast where at History podcast at iHeartRadio dot com, and you can subscribe to our show on the I heart radio app and anywhere else you'd like to get your podcasts. Stuff you missed in

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