Sudanese explorer and slave narrative author, was the son of a prosperous farmer, living in the remote Nuba Mountains in what was then Darfur in Sudan. There, he had prospects of becoming not only a landed proprietor but also a courtier at the court of the renowned Muslim kingdom of Taqali. He himself was betrothed at the age of eight. When he was about nine or ten years old he was captured by Arab slavers and taken to the Cairo slave market, after many adventures and horrifying experiences, being passed from one master to another and crossing the feared Bayuda Desert. In Cairo he was purchased by the British commercial consul in Alexandria, Robert Thurburn, and taken back to the family home at Peterculter, near Aberdeen in Scotland, in 1836. He never saw his family or homeland again.
He was put in charge of Thurburn s brother John formerly ...
