BARTH, HEINRICH (18211865)

This article appears in Volume V03, Page 447 of the Encyclopedia Britannica.

Encyclopedia Britannica - Main :: BAR-BEC

BARTH, HEINRICH (18211865) , German explorer, was born at Hamburg on the 16th of February 1821, and educated at Berlin University, where he graduated in 1844. He had already visited Italy and Sicily and had formed a plan to journey throughthe Mediterranean countries. After studying Arabic in London he set out on his travels in 1845. From Tangier he made his way overland throughout the length of North Africa, visiting the sites of the ancient cities of Barbary and Cyrenaica. He also travelled through Egypt, ascending the Nile to Wadi Haifa and crossing the desert to Berenice. While in Egypt he was attacked and wounded by robbers. Crossing the

Sinai

SINAI

' peninsula he traversed Palestine, Syria, Asia

Minor

, Turkey and

Greece

GREECE

, everywhere examining the remains cf antiquity; and returned to Berlin in 1847. For a time he was engaged there as Privatdocent, and in preparing for publication the narrative of his Wanderungen durch die Kiistenlander des Mitlelmeeres, which appeared in 1849.
At the instance of Bunsen and other scientists, Barth and Adolf Overweg, a Prussian astronomer, were appointed colleagues of James Richardson, an explorer of the Sahara who had been selected by the British government to open up commercial relations with the states of the central and western Sudan. The party left

Tripoli

"early in 185o, but the deaths of Richardson (March 1851) and Overweg (September 1852) left Barth to carry on the mission alone. He returned to Europe in September 18,55, after one' of the most fruitful expeditions ever undertaken in inner Africa. In addition to journeys across the Sahara, Barth traversed the country from Lake Chad and Bagirmi on the

east

EAST
EAST, ALFRED (1849- )

to Timbuktu on the west and Cameroon on the

south

SOUTH
SOUTH, ROBERT (1634–1716)

, making prolonged sojourns in the ancient sultanates or emirates of Borne, Kano, Nupe, Sokoto and

Gando

GANDO

and at Timbuktu. He studied minutely the topography, history, civilizations and resources of the countries he visited. The story of his travels was published simultaneously in English and' German, under the title Travels and Discoveries in North and Central, Africa (1857-1858, 5 vols.). For accuracy,

interest

INTEREST

, variety and extent of information Barth's Travels have few rivals among works of the kind. It is a book that will always rank as a standard authority on the regions in question, of which a

great

GREAT

part, under the name of Nigeria, has since come under British

rule

RULE

. Except a C.B., Barth himself received no recognition of his services from the British government. He returned to Germany, where he prepared a collection of Central African vocabularies (Gotha, 1862-1866). In 1858 he' undertook another journey in Asia

Minor

, and in 1862 visited Turkey in Europe. In the following year he was appointed professor of geography at Berlin University and president of the Geographical Society. He died at Berlin on the
25th of November 1865.
See Schubert's Heinrich Barth, der Bahnbrecher der deutschen Afrikaforschung (Berlin, 1897). An edition of the Travels in two volumes was published in London in 1890 (Minerva Library of Famous Books).

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