The Vischer family archives

Abstract

Until the end of the 19th century, the camel road from Kukawa near Lake Chad in Northern Nigeria to Tripoli in Libya was essentially a slave route. Only the most robust slaves survived the desert march which usually ended in the great slave market of Murzuk in central Libya. Prior to John Hare in 2001/2002, the last foreigner known to have followed the road in its entirety was the Swiss-born, British national Hanns Vischer, in 1906.

This article, which quotes from the Vischer family archive, highlights and compares the differences that have arisen in undertaking this journey with camels after a lapse of 100 years. It reveals how Vischer was attacked by Tuaregs at Tajirhi in southern Libya and his encounters with imprisoned Turkish and Bulgarian revolutionaries and miscreants in Murzuk. It also highlights the dangers to a foreigner of undertaking this journey at a time when the Ottoman empire was crumbling and the French and the British were striving to carve out their colonial territories in the vast Saharan and sub-Saharan regions of Africa.