Al-Zubayr Rahma Mansur Pasha (Arabic: الزبير رحمة منصور; 1830 – January 1913), also known as Sebehr Rahma or Rahama Zobeir, was a slave trader in the late 19th century. He later became a pasha and Sudanese governor.
His reputation as a nemesis of General Charles Gordon meant he was bestowed a near-mythic status in England, where he was referred to as "the richest and worst", a "Slaver King" "who [had] chained lions as part of his escort"
Born in 1830 as Al-Zubayr Rahma Mansur, he came from the Gemaab section of the Ja'Alin, an Arab tribe indigenous to Northern Sudan.
He began his large-scale business in 1856, when he left Khartoum with a small army, to set up a network of trading forts known as zaribas, focusing his efforts on slave trading and ivory sales. At its height, his trading empire, backed by a personal army, controlled much the Bahr el Ghazal as well as what are today parts of Chad and the Central African Republic.
In 1871, at the height of his power, Rahma was visited at his headquarters in Deim Zubeir by George Schweinfurth, who described the slave trader's court as "little less than princely". Isma'il Pasha of Egypt desired control over the region, but Rahma defeated a mercenary army sent against him. Instead in 1873 Isma'il added the region to his empire by acknowledging Rahma's power and granting him the title of Governor over Bahr el Ghazal
While slave-raiding had been practised by Southern warlords before, the trade was taken under Zubeir to unprecedented large-scale levels. According to another pioneer of Sudan academia, Richard Gray, "by 1867 it was reliably estimated that 1800 slaves a year were being dispatched northwards by Zubair". It is widely assumed that in what is now South Sudan altogether as many as 400,000 people were enslaved in just fourteen years. Many thousands are assumed to have been killed as they resisted. Deim Zubeir became, "as it were, the metropolis and the clearing house of the slave industry in that part of the world."[20]
Zubeir himself later claimed in a number of interviews that the establishment of his rule was a civilising mission in the name of Islam and that locals flocked to him for life service because of the stable conditions he provided in contrast to their previous poverty and insecurity. He also argued that European colonialism in the name of abolitionism was just another form of slavery.
In 1871, at the height of his power, when Zubeir controlled much of the Bahr el Ghazal region as well as what are today parts of Chad and the CAR, he was visited at Deim Zubeir by the pioneering botanist and ethnologist George Schweinfurth, who was the first European to see the place.
In 1873, the Ottoman rulers of Sudan acknowledged Zubeir’s power and granted him the title of governor over Bahr El Ghazal. One year later, he conquered the Darfur sultanate with his army of bazinger slave soldiers. As Zachary Berman concludes, Deim Zubeir was "simultaneously imperial and imperialized, an empire unto himself as well as part of overlapping overarching powers."
Deim Zubeir - Wikipedia
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Al-Zubayr Rahma Mansur - Wikipedia
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