Selim Aga was just eight years old when he was abducted from the remote Nuba Mountains of Sudan by Arab slavers and auctioned 2,000 miles away in the Cairo slave market.
Selim was bought and sold at least eight times before being released from slavery by Robert Thurburn, the British Consul at Alexandria, who took him to his family home in Aberdeenshire in 1836. Little is known of his time in Scotland but what is certain is that Selim grasped every experience and opportunity to learn, and later became an author, lecturer and explorer, as Sir Richard Burton's manservant in West Africa.
James McCarthy's biography is a fascinating piece of detective work that sets Selim's life in the context of European imperialism and the international trade in human cargo. A rare and highly significant document, Selim's own remarkable narrative of his early life is also presented here in its entirety.


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