Sidi Mubarak Bombay: the unsung African adventurer behind the European explorers

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Bombay’s village, however, was inland and isolated, allowing its inhabitants little interaction with the outside world, and leaving them vulnerable to the traps that slave traders patiently laid. Upon their return to Bombay’s village, the men “demanded of the inhabitants instant liquidation of their debts… or stand the consequence of refusal”. No wealthier now than they had been when they incurred the debts, and with no guns to defend themselves, the villagers had only one hope: to run.

Sold into slavery

“The whole village,” Bombay remembered, “took to precipitate flight.” Bombay never learned what happened to his father, nor did he ever again call this village home. Along with everyone else who had not escaped – or died trying – he was bound with rope and chains, and dragged hundreds of miles to the coast. Forced onto a boat, he was taken first to the island of Kilwa and then north to Zanzibar, where he was sold for cloth and put on a ship bound for India.

Now thousands of miles from home, he was stripped not only of his freedom and his family but also of his name. For the rest of his life he would be known by his Indian moniker: Sidi Mubarak Bombay.

Bombay’s enslavement lasted some 20 years, until his enslaver died. Finally gaining his freedom, he returned to east Africa. The life he had once known was gone, but he was now older, stronger. He had a better understanding of the world’s brutality, but also of his own resilience.

By the mid-19th century, British and other European interest in Africa had reached fever pitch, sparking a frenzied race to explore and map the continent and, ultimately, to colonise it. Among the most ambitious of these efforts was the East African Expedition, launched by the Royal Geographical Society in 1856 and led by the famed British explorer Richard Francis Burton, with John Hanning Speke as second-in-command. The two men were sent to east Africa with one mission taking priority above all others: to find the source of the Nile.

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The longest and most storied river in the world, the Nile brings life to the Egyptian desert, nurturing one of the oldest and richest civilisations in history. Finding the river’s source had been the Holy Grail of exploration for millennia. The Nile comprises two primary branches, the White and the Blue. The source of the shorter, darker Blue Nile had been found in 1618 but, more than 200 years later, the source of the White Nile remained a mystery to the outside world.

What was Sidi Mubarak Bombay's role in the search for the source of the Nile?

Soon after Burton and Speke landed in Zanzibar in December 1856, they made a trip to explore the mainland coast, where they met the man now called Bombay, who was working for that state’s first sultan at a small military station. Hoping to add as many men as he could to his expedition, Burton hired several of the sultan’s soldiers.

The only one who really impressed him was Bombay who, Burton wrote, quickly became “the gem of the party”. Though small and thin, Bombay was smart and strong. More important, his “good conduct and honesty of purpose”, Speke later marvelled, were “without parallel”.

What astonished Burton and Speke most about Bombay was that he had emerged from the staggering tragedy of his early life not with bitterness but with seemingly endless stores of kindness and good will. “He would do no wrong to benefit himself,” Speke wrote. “To please anybody else there is nothing he would stick at.”

Even Burton, who liked to complain that Bombay was forgetful and clumsy, had to admit that no one was more thoughtful or eager to help. In particular, he would never forget Bombay’s kindness toward him during an especially gruelling march, when both Burton and Speke became too ill to walk unaided. The expedition could spare only one donkey, which was given to Speke, leaving Burton to hobble behind as best he could.

What astonished Burton and Speke most about Bombay was that he had emerged from the staggering tragedy of his early life not with bitterness but with seemingly endless stores of kindness and good will

Forced to lie down to rest every half hour, he looked up at one point to see Bombay, who had been leading Speke’s donkey, hurrying back along the path toward him. “I saw with pleasure the kindly face of Seedy Bombay,” he wrote, “who was returning to me in hot haste, leading an ass, and carrying a few scones and hard-boiled eggs.”

Experience on European expeditions

Over the following three decades, Bombay worked as caravan leader and translator, guard and guide, porter and nurse on a series of further expeditions. With Burton and Speke he traversed more than 1,000 miles of the African interior, helping them become the first Europeans to see Lake Tanganyika, the longest and second-deepest freshwater lake in the world.

Several months later, on their way back to the coast, Speke and Bombay temporarily left the central expedition and took a smaller group to another lake, known to some locals as Nyanza – the largest freshwater body in Africa, and the second-largest in the world. Although he could not prove it – and Burton, who had been too ill to make this additional journey, was sceptical – Speke was convinced that the Nyanza was the source of the White Nile.

After the end of the East African Expedition, the search to establish the source continued without Burton – but not without Bombay. When Speke, now leading his own expedition, returned to east Africa in 1860, the first man he wanted with him was Bombay. Together they travelled back to the Nyanza, which Speke had named Lake Victoria after Queen Victoria, but were unable to circumnavigate it.

Sidi Mubarak Bombay & Henry Morton Stanley

Ten years later, Bombay helped lead the Welsh-American journalist Henry Morton Stanley to the banks of the Tanganyika, where he found the Scottish explorer-missionary David Livingstone, who had been missing for four years. Stanley later circumnavigated the Nyanza, confirming it as the principal source of the White Nile.

Bombay’s last European-backed expedition was with Verney Lovett Cameron, when they became the first to cross equatorial Africa, from east to west, sea to sea. Despite the important role he had played in so many of their expeditions, the Royal Geographical Society never brought Bombay to Britain. After retiring from exploring, he worked for the Church Missionary Society, dying in Africa at the age of 65.

Every explorer with whom Bombay travelled has been commemorated in stone or word, or both. Although the Royal Geographical Society awarded Bombay a silver medal and a small lifetime pension, no memorials have been built in his honour and no biographies tell his remarkable life story. The world, however, has slowly begun to change. A fuller tale is emerging – one that may finally allow Bombay, along with men and women like him, to take his rightful place in the annals of exploration.

This article was first published in the August 2023 issue of BBC History Magazine