- Friedrich Hornemann
Friedrich Conrad Hornemann (
September 15 1772 inHildesheim - February 1801) was a German explorer inAfrica .He was a young man when, early in 1796, he offered his services to the
African Association of London as an explorer in Africa. By the association he was sent to theUniversity of Göttingen to study Arabic and otherwise prepare for an expedition into the unknown regions of North Africa from the east. In September 1797 he arrived inEgypt , where he continued his studies. On the invasion of the country by the French he was confined in the citadel ofCairo , to preserve him from the fanaticism of the populace. Liberated by the French, he received the patronage of Bonaparte. On5 September 1798 he joined a caravan returning to theMaghreb fromMecca , attaching himself to a party ofFezzan merchants who accompanied the pilgrims. As an avowedChristian would not have been permitted to join the caravan Hornemann assumed the character of a youngmamluk trading to Fezzan. He then spoke, but indifferently, both Arabic and Turkish, and he was accompanied as servant and interpreter byJoseph Freudenburg , a German convert toIslam , who had thrice made the pilgrimage to Mecca. Travelling by way of the oases of Siwa andAujila , a black rocky desert was traversed toTemissa in Fezzan.Murzuk was reached on17 November 1798 .Here Hornemann lived until June 1799, going thence to the city of
Tripoli , whence in August of the same year he despatched his journals toLondon . He then returned to Murzuk. Nothing further is known with certainty concerning him or his companion. In Murzuk Hornemann had collected a great deal of trustworthy information concerning the peoples and countries of the westernSahara and centralSudan , and when he leftTripoli it was his intention to go direct to the Hausa country, which region he was the firstEurope an definitely to locate. "If I do not perish in my undertaking", he wrote in his journal, "I hope in five years I shall be able to make the Society better acquainted with the people of whom I have given this short description." The British consul at Tripoli heard from a source believed to be trustworthy that about June 1803 Jusef (Hornemann's Muslim name) was at Caina, i.e.Katsina , in NorthernNigeria , in good health and highly respected as amarabout . A report reached Murzuk in 1819 that the traveller had gone to Noofy (Nupe ), and had died there. Hornemann was the first European in modern times to traverse the north-eastern Sahara, and up to 1910 no other explorer had followed his route across the Jebel-es-Suda from Aujila to Temissa.The original text of Hornemann's journal, which was written in German, was printed at Weimar in 1801; an English translation, "Travels from Cairo to Mourzouk, &c., with maps and dissertations by Major
James Rennell ", appeared in London in 1802. A French translation of the English work, made by order of the First Consuls and augmented with notes and a memoir on the Egyptian oases byL. Langlès , was published inParis in the following year. The French version is the most valuable of the three. Consult also the Proceedings of the African Association (1810), and the Geog. Jnl. Nov. 1906.1911 The article can be found here: [http://encyclopedia.jrank.org/HIG_HOR/HORNEMANN_FREDERICK_fl_17961800.html]
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