Tanzania / Zanzibar: Tippu Tip, Tippoo Tip or Tippu Tib, East African slaver, businessman and warlord (1837-1905) with close friend and associate Buena Nzigue (left), 1889.

Tippu Tip or Tib (1837 Ð June 14, 1905), real name Hamad bin Mu_ammad bin Jumah bin Rajab bin Mu_ammad bin SaÔ_d al-Murghab_, (Arabic: ___ __ ____ __ ____ __ ___ __ ____ __ ____ ________), was a Swahili-Zanzibari trader. He was famously known by the natives of East Africa as Tippu Tib after the sounds that his many guns made. A notorious slave trader, plantation owner and governor, who worked for a succession of sultans of Zanzibar, he led many trading expeditions into Central Africa, involving the slave trade and ivory trade. He constructed profitable trading posts that reached deep into Central Africa. He 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. However, by 1895, he had acquired 'seven shambas [plantations] and 10,000 slaves'. His 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. He met and helped several famous western explorers of the African continent, including Henry Morton Stanley. Between 1884 and 1887, El Murgebi claimed the Eastern Congo for himself and for the Sultan of Zanzibar, Bargash bin Said el Busaidi. In spite of his position as protector of Zanzibar's interests in Congo, he managed to maintain good relations with the Europeans. Around 1890/91, he returned to Zanzibar where he retired. He wrote his autobiography, which is the first example of this literary genre in Swahili. El Murgebi wrote his autobiography in Swahili in Arabic script. Dr. Heinrich Brode, who knew him in Zanzibar, transcribed the manuscript into Roman script and translated it into German. It was subsequently translated into English and published in Britain in 1907. He died June 13, 1905, of malaria (according to Brode) in his home in Stone Town, the main t