A Tunisian scholar’s hajj rerouted his life to the Sennar court permanently
Evidence
This was the case for Muhammad al-Tunisï’s grandfather Suleiman, who left Tunis for the hajj in the late eighteenth century, never to return. In Mecca, Suleiman met other traders from Sennär who invited him to join them when they returned home, an offer he accepted.There, the Sennäri mek, or king, honored him for his learning with a fine home and a beautiful Ethiopian slave, with whom Suleiman fell in love and began another family. As his grandson remembered it many years later, “He forgot his family in Tunis and all of his young children.” — Eve M. Troutt Powell, A Different Shade of Colonialism_…, 147
Categorization
Category: Factual Claims
- CANDY: Delightful micro-story — a scholar goes on pilgrimage, meets traders, ends up abandoning his family for a Sudanese-Ethiopian life; humanizes the pre-1820 Sudan-Egypt network.