Tippu Tib
| Tippu Tip | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Born |
Hamad bin Muhammad bin Juma bin Rajab el Murjebi 1832 Zanzibar |
| Died | June 14, 1905 Stone Town, Zanzibar |
| Occupation | Slave trader, ivory merchant, explorer, governor |
Tippu Tip, or Tib (1832 – June 14, 1905), real name Hamad bin Muhammad bin Juma bin Rajab el Murjebi, was a Swahili-Zanzibari slave trader. An ivory trader, explorer, plantation owner and governor, he worked for a succession of the sultans of Zanzibar. Tippu Tip traded in slaves for Zanzibar's clove plantations. As part of the large and lucrative ivory trade, he led many trading expeditions into Central Africa by constructing profitable trading posts that reached deep into the region. He bought the ivory from local suppliers and resold it for a profit at coastal ports.
It is believed that Tippu Tip was born around 1832 on Zanzibar, based on descriptions of his age at points in his life. Tippu Tip's mother, Bint Habib bin Bushir, was a Muscat Arab of the ruling class. His father and paternal grandfather were coastal Swahili who had taken part in the earliest trading expeditions to the interior. His paternal great-grandmother, wife of Rajab bin Mohammed bin Said el Murgebi, was the daughter of Juma bin Mohammed el Nebhani, a member of a respected Muscat (Oman) family, and a Bantu woman from the village of Mbwa Maji, a small village south of what would later become the German capital of Dar es Salaam. Tip himself was purportedly of well-bred carriage, with a "Negroid" countenance.
At a relatively young age he led a group of about 100 men into Central Africa for slaves and ivory. After plundering several large swathes of land he returned to Zanzibar to consolidate his resources and recruit for his forces. Following this he returned to mainland Africa.
Throughout his lifetime Hamad bin Muhammad bin Juma bin Rajab el Murjebi was more commonly known as Tippu Tib, which translates to "the gatherer together of wealth." Some theories suggest that the nickname originated with Africans who said that the guns his forces carried sounded like "tip-u-tip-u-tip."
Tippu Tip built himself a trading empire that he then translated into clove plantations on Zanzibar. Abdul Sheriff reported that when he left for his twelve years of "empire building" on the mainland, he had no plantations of his own. By 1895, he had acquired "seven 'shambas' [plantations] and 10,000 slaves."
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