Tippu Tip
1832 – 1905 Zanzibari (Swahili-Arab) ivory and slave trader, plantation owner, colonial governor
Zanzibari trader who built a commercial empire in eastern Congo on the ivory trade and the enslavement of Africans, and later governed Stanley Falls for Leopold II.
- Religion
- Muslim
- Affiliations
- Zanzibar sultanate, Congo Free State
Hamad bin Muhammad el Murjebi, known as Tippu Tip, was born around 1832 in Zanzibar and became the most powerful of the East African caravan traders. He carved out a personal domain in eastern Congo whose wealth rested on ivory and on the capture and sale of enslaved Africans, a trade that devastated the communities in his path. He guided and supplied European explorers, including Henry Morton Stanley, and briefly served as governor of the Stanley Falls district for King Leopold II's Congo Free State. He retired to Zanzibar, where he dictated an autobiography and died in 1905.
Connections
- associate of Leopold II — Served briefly as governor of Stanley Falls for the Congo Free State.
- associate of Seyyid Said bin Sultan — Operated within the Zanzibar-centred caravan economy Said built.
- associate of Seyyid Said bin Sultan — The caravan economy Said built underpinned traders like Tippu Tip.
In the timeline
- 1800 Ivory and the trade in enslaved people leading trader in ivory and enslaved people
- 1840 Zanzibar's Clove, Ivory, and Slave Economy major operator within the trade
- 1870 Raiding devastates the interior mentioned