Mahbuba, the Beloved

The Story of a 19th Century Ethiopian Slave-girl

The Slave Trade of former days affected all parts of Africa, Ethiopia not excepted. Though people nowadays think mainly of the sea-borne slave trade from West Africa to the New World there was a no less important trade from Ethiopia and East Africa to Egypt , the Middle East, and even India . A number of slaves from Ethiopia likewise found their way to Europe . It is with one of them, Bilile or Ajamé, an Oromo-speaking girl from Guma in south-west Ethiopia , that we are today concerned.

Born around 1825 Bilile was little more than ten years old when her life was shattered, apparently as a result of inter-ethnic fighting. Her father and brothers were all killed, and she and a sister fell into the hands of slave-merchants. She was taken first to the then Ethiopian capital, Gondar ; next to Khartoum , in the Sudan ; and finally, to Cairo , site of an internationally famous slave-market.

There she caught the eye, in 1837, of the eccentric German prince, Hermann von Pückler-Muskau, who, according to his biographer, was “moved by her charm and the pleasantness of her appearance, and purchased her.” Recalling this purchase long afterwards Pückler-Muskau, somewhat patronizingly, declared that Bilile, still little more than a child, was “like a blank page eagerly awaiting what would be inscribed on it.” Be that as it may, he immediately fell in love with her – and took her with him on a romantic voyage up the Nile . He recalls one night on the Nile when she lay on his bed, and “sang Abyssinian songs in her sad, melancholy way with muted voice.” She was, however, no docile slave. He recalls another night, when irritated with him, she threw all his presents overboard into the Nile – and refused to eat for twenty-four hours.

The prince, who was married, was perhaps understandably reluctant to reveal his relationship with Bilile to his wife Princess Lucie. In September 1837 he nevertheless wrote to the latter, declaring that he was accompanied by a “beautiful Abyssinian slave-girl” - and a few weeks later he revealed that he had given the latter a new name: Mahbuba, which in Arabic meant, significantly enough, The Beloved. To better to communicate with her he began to teach her Italian, which he declared the Language of Love.

Before long the time came for Pückler to return to his native Germany . He accordingly made his way, with Mahbuba, to Lebanon , where he introduced her to Lady Hester Stanhope, the eccentric niece of the British Prime Minister William Pitt. Pückler and Mahbuba then crossed the Bosphorus, and proceeded to the Austrian capital, Vienna . There they met the veteran Austrian statesman Prince Metternich, the Hungarian nobleman Count Esterhazy, and the international financier Baron Rothschild. Mahbuba also conversed with the Austrian linguist Hammer-Purgenthall, with whom she spoke Arabic.

Unable to stay with the Slave-girl in Europe as he had done in the Middle East, Pückler placed her in a Vienna boarding-house – but corresponded with her constantly. In one of his letters, all of which are extant, he writes (in Italian): “I love you very much, as you well know and I desire that time passes pleasantly for you, and that you are amusing yourself, but that you are also learning something.”

Mahbuba, however, was by then in failing health. Like many children of Africa in those days, she did not take kindly to the cold European winter climate. She soon developed consumption, thus causing the distressed prince to write, “Poor Mahbuba is like a skeleton. I fear greatly for her.”

Though seriously ill – and with scarcely a month to live, she made contact with other Oromo-speaking slaves from Ethiopia , and through them met the German scholar Karl Tutschek, who was then studying their language. She sang him many beautiful songs, which he was to preserve for posterity.

Pückler, however, was at this point called away to Berlin , where his wife Princess Lucie was also seriously ill. He nevertheless continued to correspond with Mahbuba. Feeling a presentiment that her end was near, she wrote several piteous letters. In one of them she declared, “I am very ill, and I will never be cured. I wish only that you, my prince, will be present at my death. I am nothing but a worm, and provided God does not die, for me to live or die is the same to me.'

On receiving a subsequent letter from Pückler, she wrote: “I think of you always, day and night… I send you a thousand thanks for the note you sent me. I gaze on your portrait all the time. While I was near it the other evening, looking at it, I received your letter… my happiness was so great that I could not sleep.”

Despite her pleasure at receiving his letter, Mahbuba's health was deteriorating almost from day to day. Pückler, much concerned, accordingly wrote to his “dear angel,” saying that he was unfortunately still detained in Berlin “on important matters,” but that:

“The moment I am free I will get into a carriage to see my little brown one, with whom my thoughts are always present. I kiss you tenderly with all my heart…”

Mahbuba never saw this letter, for she died on 27 October 1840, a few hours before it arrived. Her last words to her doctor were “Write a good, good farewell to my dear prince.”

Pückler was heart-broken when he heard the news of his Beloved's death. “I will never be able to console myself over the fact,” he wrote to her doctor, “that I was unable by my presence to sweeten the last moments of poor Mahbuba, and the approach of her death… this death touches me more dearly than all of you can conceive, and it would have been a great consolation for me not to have abandoned the poor girl in death whom I never abandoned in life… Shall I one day see her again? On this question the silent grave gives no answer. My sobs echo in the stony vault.”

Writing later to a friend he sadly testified that Mahbuba was “the being I loved most of all the world.”

 And more than that no man can say!