Mehmed Emin Pasha (born Isaak Eduard Schnitzer, baptized Eduard Carl Oscar Theodor Schnitzer, (born March 28, 1840, Oppeln, Silesia [now Opole, Poland]—died October 23, 1892, Kanema, Congo Free State [now Democratic Republic of the Congo]), He was an Ottoman physician of German Jewish origin.
When he was only two years old his parents moved to Neisse, where in 1846 the boy was baptized into the Protestant Church. When he was still a young child, his father, Ludwig, a merchant, died, and Eduard’s mother, Pauline, remarried. Her new husband was a Christian named Schweitzer, and she and her two children underwent baptism and entered the Lutheran church.
In 1865 Schnitzer became a medical officer in the Turkish army and used his leisure to begin learning the Turkish, Arabic, and Persian languages. While serving the Ottoman governor of northern Albania (1870–74), he adopted a Turkish mode of living and a Turkish name. The Ottoman Empire conferred the title "Pasha" on him in 1886, and thereafter he was referred to as "Emin Pasha".
After finishing his studies at the Neisse gymnasium, he studied medicine at Breslau, Königsberg, and Berlin, passing the M.D. examination in 1864. From childhood it was his ambition to travel. This desire had such a strong hold on him that he left the university in 1864 before passing his state examination, and went to England, then to Italy, and finally to Turkey. In 1865 he was appointed quarantine medical officer at Antivari near Constantinople, which position he held for four years. In 1870 he became physician to Hakki Ismail Pasha, after whose death in 1873, Schnitzer took Madame Ismail, her children and her slave girls back to his hometown, and presented them as his family. When the burden of supporting a family and entourage became onerous, however, he paid (1874) a brief visit to his home, and, traveling through Germany, Austria, and Italy, he reached Cairo and then Khartoum, the capital of Egyptian Sudan arriving in Khartum Dec. 3, 1875.
. In 1876 he joined the British governor-general of the Sudan, Gen. Charles Gordon, as medical officer at Khartoum. In this post he was known as Emin Effendi and was called upon to tend to administrative duties and to carry out diplomatic missions to Uganda and elsewhere. In 1878 Gordon appointed him governor of Equatoria in the southern Sudan (now South Sudan), with the title of bey.
The German government then asked him to undertake an expedition to equatorial Africa to secure territories south of and along Lake Victoria to Lake Albert. Soon after the expedition started, however, an Anglo-German agreement was signed (July 1, 1890) excluding Lake Albert from German influence.
Charles George Gordon, then governor of Equatoria, heard of Emin's presence and invited him to be the chief medical officer of the province; Emin assented and arrived there in May 1876. Gordon immediately sent Emin on diplomatic missions to Buganda and Bunyoro to the south, where Emin's modest style and fluency in Luganda were quite popular.
After 1876, Emin made Lado his base for collecting expeditions throughout the region. In 1878, the Khedive of Egypt appointed Emin as Gordon's successor to govern the province, giving him the title of Bey. Despite the grand title, there was little for Emin to do; his military force consisted of a few thousand soldiers who controlled no more than a mile's radius around each of their outposts, and the government in Khartoum was indifferent to his proposals for development. He showed himself a bitter foe of slavery.[2]
The revolt of Muhammad Ahmad that began in 1881 had cut Equatoria off from the outside world by 1883, and the following year, Karam Allah marched south to capture Equatoria and Emin. In 1885, Emin and most of his forces withdrew further south, to Wadelai near Lake Albert. Cut off from communications to the north, he was still able to exchange mail with Zanzibar through Buganda. Determined to remain in Equatoria, his communiques, carried by his friend Wilhelm Junker, aroused considerable sentiment in Europe in 1886, particularly acute after the death of Gordon the previous year.
The Emin Pasha Relief Expedition, led by Henry Morton Stanley, undertook to rescue Emin by going up the Congo River and then through the Ituri Forest, an extraordinarily difficult route that resulted in the loss of two-thirds of the expedition. Precise details of this trek are recorded in the published diaries of the expedition's non-African "officers" (e.g. Major Edmund Musgrave Barttelot, Captain William Grant Stairs, Mr. A. J. Mounteney Jephson, or Thomas Heazle Parke, surgeon of the expedition). Stanley met Emin in April 1888, and after a year spent in argument and indecision, during which Emin and Jephson were imprisoned at Dufile by troops who mutinied from August to November 1888, Emin was convinced to leave for the coast. The bulk of his forces remained near Lake Albert until 1890, when Frederick Lugard took them with him to Kampala Hill, where they participated in the Battle of Kampala Hill. Stanley and Emin arrived in Bagamoyo in 1890. During celebrations, Emin was injured when he stepped through a window he mistook for an opening to a balcony. Emin spent two months in a hospital recovering, while Stanley left without being able to bring him back in triumph.
The introduction of sleeping sickness in Uganda was attributed to the movement of Emin and his followers. Prior to the 1890s, sleeping sickness was unknown in Uganda, but the tsetse fly was probably brought by Emin from the Congo territory.
Emin then entered the service of the German East Africa Company and accompanied Dr. Stuhlmann on an expedition to the lakes in the interior, but was killed by two Arab slave traders at Kinena Station in the Congo Free State, near Nyangwe, on the 23rd or 24 October 1892.
The introduction of sleeping sickness in Uganda was attributed to the movement of Emin and his followers. Prior to the 1890s, sleeping sickness was unknown in Uganda, but the tsetse fly was probably brought by Emin from the Congo territory.
Emin then entered the service of the German East Africa Company and accompanied Dr. Stuhlmann on an expedition to the lakes in the interior, but was killed by two Arab slave traders at Kinena Station in the Congo Free State, near Nyangwe, on the 23rd or 24 October 1892. He added greatly to the anthropological knowledge of central Africa and published valuable geographical papers. In 1890 he was awarded the Founder's Gold Medal of the Royal Geographical Society. Emin Pasha is commemorated in the scientific name of a species of African snake, Leptotyphlops emini.
Though Emin Pasha published no books, he wrote many valuable papers on Africa for German journals and forwarded rich and varied collections of animals and plants to Europe.
Part of this article was most recently revised and updated by Amy McKenna, Senior Editor.
Bibliography: Georg Schweitzer, Briefe und Wissenschaftliche Aufzeichnungen Emin Pasha's, Eng. ed., New York, 1898 (ii. 313-314 gives a full bibliography).
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