In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

71 4 the brief life of ‘ali, the orphan of kordofan The Egyptian Slave Trade in the Sudan, 1820–35 george michael la rue The D’gellab was now introduced with his young charge, certainly a noble little fellow, though only three years old; he was a native of Cordofan, and of a very dark brown colour, with short, frizzly hair, and the negro cast of countenance; but evidently one of a very handsome tribe. Phrenologically speaking, he had a very fine head, inasmuch as the animal propensities were but little developed, and the intellectual organs were larger than we generally see in the African. I examined him thoroughly; he bore marks of the small-pox on his body, and was in perfect health. Indeed, I was so pleased with the child, that I purchased him for twenty-five dollars, thinking that, being so young, I could train him up in my own way; and as he could have nothing to unlearn, no prejudices to overcome, and few, if any recollections of his home, that a very fair opportunity would be afforded of ascertaining what could be done in the way of education.1 ‘Ali was one of the few child slaves from the nineteenth-century Sudan to be described by more than one European writer.2 His life is recounted by Dr. William Holt Yates, a member of the British Royal College of Physicians and an abolitionist, and in part by Edmond de Cadalvène and 72 george michael la rue J. de Breuvery, two scholarly French travelers who briefly accompanied Yates up the Nile in 1834.3 Yates purchased ‘Ali in Wadi Halfa (then in Upper Egypt), intending to release him from slavery. These accounts depict the forces that brought ‘Ali into slavery, the market where he was purchased, the implicit ideology of his liberator, and his fate as a freed slave in Egypt and England. ‘Ali’s brief biography is best understood in the contexts of the trans-Saharan slave trade and the abolitionist movement of the era. “the d’gellab was now introduced with his young charge . . .” In 1834 the slave trade between the Sudan and Egypt already had a very long history.4 After the Egyptian invasion of the Sudan in 1820–21, Muhammad ‘Ali Pasha, the ruler of Egypt, sought to monopolize the slave trade into Egypt and used Egyptian troops to conduct slave raids. By the early 1830s the troops were primarily Sudanese male slaves. Their pay was usually in arrears and cash was in short supply, so the soldiers were often paid in slaves. The raiding parties took the slaves they captured to collecting points such as El Obeid in Kordofan. The soldiers quickly sold them to Sudanese merchants who traded at the retail level in the Sudan, and moved some slaves to major markets such as Wadi Halfa, near the Egypt-Sudan frontier, where trans-Saharan merchants bought the more desirable slaves for transport to Egypt. There, slaves were sold both privately and—until about 1840—publicly in large market buildings in major cities, notably Cairo and Alexandria. After Yates questioned the local Egyptian governor about the slave trade, he arranged for a Sudanese jallab (a merchant in long-distance trade) to meet him.5 This merchant dealt openly in slaves in Wadi Halfa and had close ties to the governor. According to Cadalvène and de Breuvery, the three European travelers went to the jallab’s home: we followed him to his house. Women occupied the first room, if one can even give this name to the small space surrounded by straw partitions, where they had been enclosed. They were there, mixed together pell-mell. . . . We saw seven or eight of them stretched out on the ground, some completely naked, the others still covered with a few shreds of cloth. When they saw us they drew close to each other, while looking at us with astonishment and fear. We went from there into a dark and unhealthy hovel where the boys were kept. One child of six years, elegantly formed, drew the the egyptian slave trade in the sudan 73 attention of Mr. Holt Yates, and the bargain was soon struck for about sixty francs.6 Why did Dr. Yates want such a young slave? “. . . though only three years old . . .” The two Frenchmen immediately declared ‘Ali to be six years old. But Yates put his age at three and called him a little fellow. Given his medical training , perhaps Yates...

Share