Tippu Tip, notorious to some, intriguing to others, was a Zanzibari Arab trader living in the turbulent and rapidly changing Africa of the late 19th century.

He was chiefly an ivory trader, who pioneered for new sources through present-day Tanzania into the Congo basin.

Slavery is part of his story, because Arab traders of the time used slaves as porters and sold slaves through the market in Zanzibar to work locally in plantations and beyond in the Gulf and Persia.

He was a pioneer of discovery, both in Arab terms and because this was the great period of European exploration in East and Central Africa: he assisted most of the famous explorers, including Livingstone and Stanley, when it served his interests. He can be seen as an Afro-Arab exponent of empire, as his commercial ambitions could only be realized by means of Arab territorial control and colonization.

His colourful life culminated in his engagement as governor of a province in the ‘Congo Free State’ of the Belgian King Leopold, and in his involvement in Stanley’s astonishing expedition to relieve Emin Pasha, governor of the Egyptian southern province of Equatoria.

Uniquely among Arabs and Africans of this era, Tippu Tip wrote an autobiography.