Category Archives: Sahara Historical

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: Al Qaida de Maghreb Islamique ~ Mohamed Mokkadem

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Al Qaida de Maghreb Islamique; Contrabande au nom de l’Islam
Mohamed Mokeddem (Casbah, 2010)

I picked this up in Algiers airport for 1200D (€12), having seen it mentioned on the forum. It’s in French and I surprised myself with how much I understood; perhaps have being familiar with the subject helped. But I dare say I missed many of the books nuances so what follows is a bit vague.

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It kicks off with an account of the origins of the notorious and now dead Abou Zeid, real name Mohamed Ghader (pictured on the cover), as an impoverished member of the Arabic Ghader clan living near Deb Deb, close to the Libyan border. Here he sets himself up as a successful smuggler of low value goods from Libya while getting married and divorced a few times. He’s painted as a rather withdrawn and even sociopathic figure who gets caught, goes to prison, gets radicalised and proceeds to rise up the ranks as the GSPC relocate to north Mali around the turn of the millennium. The book them jumps around chronologically, referring to recent kidnappings of the Spanish and Austrians (all listed here) as well as brief profiles of hostage negotiators and intermediaries like the influential Ould Limam Chafi from Burkina and Malian Tuareg warlords Iyaf Ag Ghali and the late Ibrahim Bahanga (the former of who is on the march again in 2012). It covers the establishment of the GSPC’s rearward base in northern Mali and gives an account of the 2003 event when 32 tourists were grabbed in the Tassili N’Ajjer in southeast Algeria.

There’s a little new information here and an odd lack of place names and other details such the enigmatic escape route to Mali and, a few months later, the subsequent flight of the gang to Chad with the ransom money where they were caught by Tubu rebels after a lethal exchange with the Chadian army. Court testimonies of a few captured kidnappers follow. Then it seems accounts of later abductions are repeated, seemingly lifted from the Ennahar website which the author ran. The origins of AQIM’s links with Al Qaida are also detailed.

Overall it comes across as a bit of a hastily completed book – not helped by the fact that a chunk of pages in my copy (with the original ‘dollar bills’ cover) are misplaced. I can’t say I learned that much new of interest, apart from the origins of Mohamed Ghader. A bit more research and detail in that vein may have been made a better read.