Author Archives: Chris S

Book review: Skeletons on the Zahara ~ Dean King

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SKELETONS ON THE ZAHARA
Dean King, 2005

This astonishing yarn expands on the gruelling tale of the 1815 wreck and enslavement of the crew of the American brig Commerce mentioned in Spanish Sahara reviewed elsewhere. The ordeal the crew suffered at the hands of the barbaric Western Saharan tribes (described collectively but not so accurately as ‘Saharawi’) is truly horrendous. At that time (and indeed right up to the St Exupery era), ransoming of foreigners to European trading posts at Essaouira or St Louis was the norm, but the Commerce had the misfortune to run around Cap Boujdour midway between the two.

Pounced upon and subsequently sold on and on to other nomads for a blanket or other chattels, the miseries of the beaten, stripped and starved crew as they tramp around the desert of present day southern Western Sahara and northern Mauritania are based chiefly on the Commerce‘s Captain Riley’s own account. This book gained wide popularity following his eventual rescue and even influenced Lincoln’s anti-slavery attitudes. For weeks at a time the best drink they could manage was cupping their hands behind a urinating camel and most lost half their body weight. Some lost their minds.

You do have a feeling the author, more familiar with maritime than desert matters, embellishes a little too heartily at times, but it all helps to drive the narrative along with barely a dull moment. This is a survival story on par with Shackleton’s amazing escape from Antarctica, and right up to the very end their continued depredations leave you guessing as to the final outcome.

Book review: Spanish Sahara ~ John Mercer

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SPANISH SAHARA
John Mercer, 1976 (o/p)

John Mercer visited this tightly controlled colony as power was slipping from Spain’s hands and the region’s Saharawi people faced recolonisation led primarily by Morocco, that resulted in the protracted Polisario conflict which endures today with the territory divided by the berm. All that was about to kick off as the book ends, and up to that point Mercer gives a very through account of this seeming Saharan No Man’s Land starting with geology, natural history and prehistory. The Berber history of the Almoravids who conquered most of Spain leads to the feeble (or unproductive) Portuguese and Spanish incursions of the late Middle Ages on which Spain based its colonial claim in the late nineteenth century. We also read about the activities of early traders like the Scot, Mackenzie, whose fortress-like trading counter still lies off Cape Juby an adventurer-entrepreneur who tried to buy into the rich trans-Saharan caravan trade before it got to Moroccan markets. Or the depredations suffered by Alexander Scott and James Riley, shipwrecked in the early nineteenth century, but who at least lived to tell the tale (see: Skeletons on the Sahara review).

We also get what must be the best English-language account of the tribes of that region closely related to today’s Moors; the well-known Arabised Reguibat, the Delim and other lesser clans who, when not raiding each other, preyed on shipwrecks, their victims and early explorers. Their complex allegiances, culture, customs and daily life is especially detailed, as in an account of the manoeuvres behind the French colonisation of the region. Resources was what they were after: the world’s largest source of phosphate at Bou Craa, the iron ore at Zouerate and the rich offshore fisheries.

It may be 30 years old, but its hard to think of a more thoroughly researched account (in English) that opens up the Western Sahara and its neighbouring regions – you’ll find it used on the web from around a tenner.

Book review: The Sword and the Cross ~ Fergus Fleming

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THE SWORD AND THE CROSS
Fergus Fleming, 2004

A double biography of two extraordinary characters who helped shape France’s colonial fortunes in North Africa. This is the story of General Henri Lapperine, the dashing Commander of the Oasis whose camel corps rode sleek racing méharis with the general at their head. Alongside walked his guide and interpreter – a sunburnt scarecrow of a man reciting prayers as they went – Charles, Pere de Foucauld.

Fleming’s style is well researched and enthralling. He admits that there is not a lot of material on Lapperine, who wrote little down and seems to have been little appreciated in his lifetime. Foucauld, an obsessive letter writer and list maker, left a large legacy and has been the subject of many works – mostly in French and usually lionising his saintly attributes.

In order to tell the tale, Fleming first describes the situation in the French African colonies of Algeria and the Soudan to the south during the 19th Century. The grandiose plan is to link the two – eventually by rail – via the Sahara, the conquest of which becomes a matter of national honour. The descriptions of the large expeditions sent to achieve this aim are horrifying – they end in unmitigated disasters, each one greater than the previous. The flamboyant characters involved are described – with a repetitive postscript ‘…they too were murdered’.

Into the desert enter two seemingly different men – bound by a desire to see the Sahara and its population as French – in Foucauld’s case, Godly and French. The main protagonist is Charles de Foucauld, an aristocrat turned hermit. Starting out as an overweight and not very good cavalry officer with a taste for women and the easy life, he is sent to Algeria. Here he discovers not only a love of the desert but also forms the idea of creating a religious order – not just an average order, but one whose regime of self denial makes Trappism seem luxurious. Living on a diet of barley and dates, spending twelve hours a day in prayer he founds an order that had a membership of one during his lifetime (unsurprisingly) and converted a single elderly blind woman. He never loses touch with his acquaintances from military days – they provide protection for him and he in turn supplies them with maps and information regarding the ‘ground feeling’ of the desert tribes.

Lapperine sees the folly of the mass marches and forms a camel corps, whose swiftness in smaller numbers and less need for supply chains enable them to subdue the Tuareg. A ‘soldiers’ soldier’ he was a hard taskmaster admired by his troops (when one of his natives was questioned about his loyalty to France he replied that his loyalty was not to France – but to Lapperine). He needed information from the Hoggar (a little light spying) and who better than his old friend Foucauld. When offered the chance to set up a hermitage in the remote outpost of Tamanrasset, Pere de Foucauld relishes the prospect of tending to the locals (and supplying Lapperine with reports).

By 1910 with the Tuat and Hoggar under the control of the French and with Foucauld alternating between Tamanrasset and his even more remote hermitage at Assekrem, Laperinne sets out on a series of tours. Although successful these are seen by his superiors as meddling in the affairs of the Ottoman Empire (which at the time was nominally in charge of the Tripolitania to the east of Algeria). Lapperine is recalled to France as war clouds gather leaving Foucauld behind. In an obscure footnote to the international situation Senoussi raiders roam the Sahara attacking the remaining French at the behest of the crumbling Ottoman Empire. Caught up in the intrigue, Foucauld is assassinated on December 1st 1916.

Upon hearing the news Lapperine requests immediate transfer back to Algeria to avenge his friend. Three years later as he lays dying, lost in the desert following an aircrash, General Lapperine’s utters his final words: ‘People think they know the desert, people think I know it. Nobody really knows it’.

Tim Stead

Book review: Tubu: The Teda and the Daza ~ Catherine Baroin

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Tubu: The Teda and the Daza
Catherine Baroin, 1997

At only 64 pages and with large print, this short book is classified as ‘history – juvenile literature’ and takes half an hour to read. Being produced in the US, I thought the publisher might have some evangelical missionary agenda, like the Joshua Project. In fact Rosen is a publisher of under-12 educational material and this title is part of their Heritage Library of African Studies, from Akamba to Zulu.

As for the book, you feel that the content is rather superficial and fragmentary and may well have been shortened or edited into its current slim form. The author has written longer books on the same subject in French, but then so have many others in that language. Not surprisingly, many of the customs described bear close resemblance to the better studied Moors or Tuareg with whom the Tubu share many characteristics.

What one would wish to know is what makes them different other than their fierce reputation. If anything, the wiki-like details presented on the Joshua page are more gritty and pertinent because the fact remains the Tubu, who are said to have adopted Islam less than a couple of centuries ago, remain the least known of the Saharan tribes.

Book review: The Western Desert of Egypt ~ Cassandra Vivien

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The Western Desert of Egypt, An Explorer’s Handbook
Cassandra Vivien,  2000

A niche publication covering the Western Oases (Bahariya, Dakhla etc), the northern coast, Siwa, the Darb el Arbain region and of course the Gilf. It was originally published in the early 1990s as Islands of the Blest; A Guide to the Oases and Western Desert of Egypt which we’re told became an ‘overnight bestseller’.

Sorry to have to say this, but the first thing that strikes you while flicking through this book is a waffle-bound, juvenile, credulous writing style; a complete absence of editing hampered by a muddled hierarchy of headings which have little relation to the ramblings that sometimes follow.

The book starts with the ‘The Natural World’ but includes a patchy, Sahara-wide history using ancient labels like ‘Bilad al-Sudan’ as if contemporary – an example of the author’s limited understanding of her subject. The author parrots the Bagnoldian declamation that the Libyan Desert and the Sahara are separate natural features because, in her words, “the Fezzan is a fertile plateau corridor that separates the Libyan Desert from the Sahara”. Me, I still think it’s a political designation about as valid as the Urals dividing Asia and Europe (as discussed in my Great Warm Deserts of the World review). We do however get a good summary of geological epochs, events and evolution pertaining to the region.

There is a good double-page map covering the book’s region on the prelim pages, and a couple of good ones elsewhere, but the half-pager on p2 is a mixture of ancient, colonial and contemporary place names. It adds up to another of this book’s many grating, literary, stylistic and graphic inconsistencies; you’d think better of the AUC Press.

The Western Oases section looks thorough, this is really where the book is best and was once knowledgeable, though you can be confident that the 100-odd pages which the latest Rough Guide devotes to the area will be more useful.

As for the Gilf (“the top of the Gilf is like the top of the world”); rather tellingly the author admits earlier that her tour guide in that region, the late Samir Lama “guards his secrets from the prying eyes of writers like me”. So be prepared to accept nothing more than historical accounts retold day-by-day, along with heartfelt observations that Lama could not censor: “Wadi Hamra is red. Red sand dunes are so beautiful. Red drifts of sand cascading down the side of a black mountain are so beautiful”. This is as much as we learn about Wadi Hamra. We learn next to nothing about Jebel Uweinat (apparently the highest point in Egypt) or the riches of Karkur Talh, although we are informed that Aqaba Pass was first ascended by “Ford 2×2 cars”.

The trivial errors, remorseless piffle and batty analogies go on and on and remind me of that other flu-ridden turkey, Sahara, the Life of the Great Desert. A Sahara-based historical novel I’ve just started reading starts in the acknowledgements with the following endearing admission: ‘As a reader I never knew the importance of a book’s editor. As a writer I have learned the truth of it’. Amen to that. While well-intentioned and enthusiastic, Cassandra Vivian seems to have spent too much time in libraries digging up archania but missed seeing the sand for the dunes, and was then let down by her publishers. Watch the binding too; open it too fast and it will explode in your face.

A newer edition was released in 2009 with 60 extra pages. The above review refers to the 2000 edition.

Book review: Wind, Sand and Stars ~ Antoine de Saint Exupery

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WIND, SAND AND STARS
Antoine de Saint Exupery

An existential adventure classic based on the author’s semi-autobiographical escapades in the early days of commercial aviation. This included flying mail across the dreaded Terres des Hommes (the Western Sahara) where you saved the last bullet for yourself. It features the almost obligatory near-death experience after crashing in the Libyan Desert. Along with Thesiger and possibly Monod (as yet untranslated in English), Exupery remains one of the few writers who adequately describes the enigma of the desert’s appeal. Heroic and philosophically poetic Man’s Stuff: Hemingway with propellers and one of the best you’ll read to capture the spirit of the desert.

To be reviewed one of these years: The Citadel – St Ex’s posthumous oeuvre.

Book review: The Unknown Sahara ~ Laszlo Almasy

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The Unknown Sahara
Laszlo Almasy. Translation by Andras Zboray

The eastern Sahara’s Libyan Desert (covering Egypt, Libya, Sudan), was one of the last corners of the desert to be explored and still remains wild and barely visited. In the late 1920 and early 30s – the Hungarian Almasy (a contemporary of Bagnold and Clayton and fictionalised as the ‘English Patient’) criss-crossed this region in then newfangled motorcars which enabled systematic exploration of this hyper-arid quarter.

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The book tells the stories of his many feats in the region: the first drive to Kufra from the west, the clarification of the Zarzura legend, the discovery of countless rock art sites including the famous Cave of the Swimmers, were some of his achievements.

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Almasy’s energy and courage is inspiring. To be bombing around the most desolate corner of the Sahara in tinny Fords (2WD of course), dropping fuel and water here and there is quite a feat. You’ll also pick up some interesting Sahara lore that is not found elsewhere, in English at least. The book could use a sketch map to point out his wanderings. Even with three maps on the go I found it hard to work out where he was – especially around the Gilf.

That said, ‘Unknown Sahara’ is a desert classic finally available in English. Like Bagnold’s Libyan Sands (reviewed elsewhere), it reveals the very earliest days of Saharan motoring. Highly recommended.

Book review: Desert Explorer ~ Patrick Clayton

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DESERT EXPLORER – A BIOGRAPHY OF COLONEL P.A. CLAYTON
Patrick Clayton (son), Zerzura Press

P.A. Clayton was one of the key figures in opening up the Libyan Desert in the early thirties. The book is a biography of the father by a son, who lived the first ten years of his life in Egypt, accompanying his father on several of his surveying expeditions deep into the desert, and the documented milestones in the explorer’s life are intermingled with details based on the author’s personal memories. It’s a pity, that the most significant of Clayton’s expeditions, those seeking the mythical Zarzura oasis in 1932 and 1933 are only described by quoting already published sources, revealing no new information. The son’s view is understandably biased, sometimes resulting in deviance from facts known from other sources, but never disturbingly so. Overall, the book is an excellent combination of already published information and personal experience, supplemented by previously unpublished photographs.

Andras Zboray

Book review: Conquest of the Sahara ~ Douglas Porch

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CONQUEST OF THE SAHARA
Douglas Porch (2005 edition by Farrar Straus Giroux)

An intriguing and readable account of France’s attempts to colonise the Sahara during the ‘Scramble for Africa’ in the latter half of the nineteenth century. Full of historical detail, it vividly describes the vainglorious expeditions, large and small, which staggered across the desert, often poorly led and suffering greatly for personal prestige and their country’s honour. The extraordinary shambles of the doomed Flatters expeditions has to be read to be believed. This description refers to the original 1986 edition.

Book review: Call of the Desert ~ Philippe Bourseiller

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CALL OF THE DESERT
Philippe Bourseiller, 2004 (28 x 36cm, 444pp)

Call of the Desert is a stonker. At around 4kg it is heavy enough to stun a full-grown horse and is packed with glossy, full-page portraits, close-ups and wide-angle vistas from the Atlantic to the Nile. All the mainstream Saharan shots all here in one book: the culture and landscapes of the Moors, some lovely Moroccan kasbahs, the Niger delta as well as Ounianga and the Ennedi and Meroe in Sudan – though not, noticeably the rich imagery of the Gilf and Uweinat – so falling short of being the absolutely ultimate Saharan picture book.

And the writing isn’t bad either. Rather than let the author do the talking which often results in flowery eulogies attempting to parallel the images, they’ve shipped in some experts who – being French (the longest-established source of Saharan scholarship) or Saharan – know better than most what they’re talking about. So you get surprisingly good accounts of the geology, pastoral society and one of the best accounts of human occupation, from the 7 million year old proto-human bones found in Chad (predating those of the Rift Valley) right up to the historic period.

It has to be said, the shop copy at Stanfords London (£30) had split its spine – the book may be too heavy for its binding – even the box it was posted to me in had split open. Amazon.co.uk pictured a different cover on its website but what you get is the book as left. They are going there from just £18 (presumably from the US where it is $31 new) which makes this the best Sahara picture book bargain since Civilisation in the Sands went for a fiver.

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Also available: CALL OF THE DESERT – THE SAHARA (2005, 75pp). Extracted from the above collection (as many travel photographers do), this is a sort of school text book on the Sahara covering various themes and places like Ghadames, sand, nomads and camels, salt, ruins and even the Chad war with drawings and maps and of course great pictures.