Rabih az-Zubayr

Rabih's head after the battle, 1900

Rabih az-Zubayr ibn Fadl Allah (other spellings of his name components are Rabeh, Fadlallah) (* around 1842 ; † April 22, 1900 ) was a warlord and ruler in the area of Lake Chad .

Life

Born around 1842 to an Arab family in Halfaya al-Muluk, a suburb of Khartoum , Rabih was a soldier in the irregular Egyptian cavalry and wounded in the fight against Ethiopia . In the 1860s he left the army and became an officer in the private army of the Sudanese slave hunter Al-Zubayr Rahma Mansur . This was installed by Egypt in 1872 as pasha of the province of Bahr al-Ghazal and in 1874 conquered the sultanate of Darfur . But in 1876 he was imprisoned in Cairo . His son Suleiman rebelled against the Khedives in Cairo, but his uprising was suppressed in 1879.

When the defeat of Suleiman was foreseeable, Rabih left with about 800 soldiers and migrated to what is now the border area of South Sudan , the Democratic Republic of the Congo and the Central African Republic , where he controlled a small area of ​​rule. In 1885 the Mahdi Muhammad Ahmad invited him , but wanted to murder him. Rabih found out about it in good time and interrupted his trip to Khartoum. In 1887 Rabih made raids against Darfur and Wadai . In 1890 he installed his nephew Mohammed al-Senoussi in the northern part of his domain as his deputy. In 1892/1893 he captured Bagirmi . In 1893 he conquered Bornu and devastated its capital Kukawa .

From then on Rabih ruled from Dikwa as Sheikh of Bornu over the countries around Lake Chad. He appointed Sudanese officers as his highest officials, continued to hunt slaves, exported about 2,000 of them a year and introduced Sharia- based laws .

In 1899 the French moved from Algeria through the Sahara and from West Africa via Sokoto against Rabih. Amédée-François Lamy , the leader of the troops from Algeria, united both armies. On April 22, 1900 the battle of Kousséri broke out . Lamy and Rabih fell, but the French troops won the battle and founded Fort Lamy (now N'Djamena ) in 1900 . By 1902, the Rabih Empire was divided between France , Great Britain and Germany .

literature

• Joseph Amegboh, Cécile Clairval: Rabah: Conquérant Des Pays Tchadiens, Grandes Figures Africaines . Nouvelles Éditions Africaines, Paris / Dakar / Abidjan 197
• A. Babikir: L'Empire du Rabih . Paris 1954
• Gaston Dujarric: La vie du sultan Rabah . Librairie Africaine & Coloniale, Paris 1902
• Encyclopædia Britannica : Rabih az-Zubayr. 1980, VIII, p. 367
• Émile Gentil: La chute de l'empire de Rabah. Hachette, Paris 1971
• WKR Hallam: The Life and Times of Rabih Fadl Allah . Elms Court, 1977
• Michael Horowitz: Ba Karim: An Account of Rabeh's Wars. In: African Historical Studies , 3, 1970, pp. 391-402
• Mohammed Kyari: Borno in the Rabih Years, 1893-1901: the Rise and Crash of a Predatory State. University of Maiduguri, Maiduguri 2006
• Max von Oppenheim : Rabeh and the Tsadsee area . Berlin 1902
• Rabah Zobeir . In: Encyclopædia Britannica . 11th edition. tape 22 : Poll - Reeves . London 1911, p. 765 (English, full text [ Wikisource ]).