A merchant's account of his travels through an independent African
state Muhammad ibn 'Umar al-Tunisi (d. 1274/1857) belonged to a
family of Tunisian merchants trading with Egypt and what is now
Sudan. Al-Tunisi was raised in Cairo and a graduate of al-Azhar. In
1803, at the age of fourteen, al-Tunisi set off for the Sultanate
of Darfur, where his father had decamped ten years earlier. He
followed the Forty Days Road, was reunited with his father, and
eventually took over the management of the considerable estates
granted to his father by the sultan of Darfur. In Darfur is
al-Tunisi's remarkable account of his ten-year sojourn in this
independent state. In Volume Two al-Tunisi describes the geography
of the region, the customs of Darfur's petty kings, court life and
the clothing of its rulers, marriage customs, eunuchs, illnesses,
food, hunting, animals, currencies, plants, magic, divination, and
dances. In Darfur combines literature, history, ethnography,
linguistics, and travel adventure, and most unusually for its time,
includes fifty-two illustrations, all drawn by the author. In
Darfur is a rare example of an Arab description of Africa on the
eve of Western colonization and vividly evokes a world in which
travel was untrammeled by bureaucracy, borders were fluid, and
startling coincidences appear almost mundane. A bilingual
Arabic-English edition.
General
Is the information for this product incomplete, wrong or inappropriate?
Let us know about it.
Does this product have an incorrect or missing image?
Send us a new image.
Is this product missing categories?
Add more categories.
Review This Product
No reviews yet - be the first to create one!
Welcome to Loot.co.za!
Sign in / Register |Wishlists & Gift Vouchers |Help | Advanced search
(7)
