Emin Pasha, << eh MEEN pah SHAH >> (1840-1892), was a German-born colonial administrator and explorer in Africa. As governor of the southern Sudanese province of Equatoria, he made important contributions to the geographical and zoological knowledge of central Africa and helped spark European colonization of the region.
Emin Pasha was born Eduard Karl Oskar Theodor Schnitzer on March 28, 1840, in Oppeln, Silesia (now Opole, Poland). He studied medicine at universities in Berlin, Breslau (now Wroclaw, Poland), and Königsberg (now Kaliningrad, Russia), but anti-Semitism (prejudice against Jews) blocked his career. In 1865, he became a medical officer for the Ottoman government in Albania, then a province of the Ottoman Empire. While there, he took a Muslim Turkish name. After he went to Africa in 1875, he adopted the name Emin (faithful one).
In 1876, Emin joined the staff of Charles Gordon, the British soldier who governed the province of Equatoria under the khedive (ruler) of Egypt. In 1877, Gordon became governor general of Sudan. He appointed Emin as bey (governor) of Equatoria in 1878. Egypt later promoted Emin to pasha, the next administrative rank. Emin worked to end the slave trade and studied the region’s plants, animals, and geography. In 1881, Muhammad Ahmad, a religious leader called the Mahdi (divinely appointed guide), began an uprising against Egyptian rule. In 1885, Emin retreated into what is now Uganda.
In 1887, King Leopold II of Belgium, with funding from English traders and the Royal Geographical Society, sent Henry Morton Stanley, a famous British-born explorer and journalist, on a mission to find Emin. Leopold and William Mackinnon, a British shipowner, portrayed Stanley’s journey as a rescue but secretly hoped to claim ivory-rich Equatoria by hiring Emin. Stanley reached Emin in 1888. Emin accompanied Stanley to Africa’s east coast, but chose to stay in Africa. From 1890, he worked on behalf of Germany, which controlled what is now Tanzania. On Oct. 23, 1892, slave traders killed Emin while he was on an expedition to the upper Congo River region.
