Selim Qapudan’s Nile expeditions drew heavy French scientific acclaim in 1842

Evidence

Selim Qapudan led three expeditions up the Nile during the years 1839- 1842, accompanied by four hundred soldiers. The captain painstakingly noted many of the details of the third and most successful voyage. When parts of this journal were published in French in 1842, the expedition was heralded by M. Jomard, the head of the French Geographic Society, as one of the greatest moments in Egyptian history. Selim Qapudan’s journal was widely celebrated in France, where it was quickly translated from the origi- nal Turkish (it was not translated into Arabic until 1922). — Eve M. Troutt Powell, A Different Shade of Colonialism_…, 197