thumb|311x311px|Schnitzer in 1884 photographed by French diplomat [[Louis-Pierre Vossion in Khartoum.]]

Mehmed Emin Pasha (born Isaak Eduard Schnitzer, baptized Eduard Carl Oscar Theodor Schnitzer; March 28, 1840 – October 23, 1892) was an Ottoman physician of German Jewish origin, naturalist, and governor of the Egyptian province of Equatoria on the upper Nile. The Ottoman Empire conferred the title "Pasha" on him in 1886, and thereafter he was referred to as "Emin Pasha".

Early life

Emin was born in Oppeln (in present-day Poland), Silesia, into a middle-class German Jewish family, who moved to Neisse when he was two years old. After the death of his father in 1845, his mother married a Christian; she and her children were baptized Lutherans. He was a student at the Kolegium Carolinum Neisse in Neisse, Silesia, and at the universities at Breslau, Königsberg, and Berlin, qualifying as a physician in 1864. However, he was disqualified from practice, and left Germany for Constantinople, with the intention of entering Ottoman service.

Travelling via Vienna and Trieste, he stopped at Antivari in Montenegro, found himself welcomed by the local community, and was soon practicing medicine. He put his linguistic talent to good use, as well, adding Turkish, Albanian, and Greek to his repertoire of languages. He became the quarantine officer of the port, leaving only in 1870 to join the staff of Ismail Hakki Pasha, governor of northern Albania; in the service, he travelled throughout the Ottoman Empire, although the details are little-known.

Turco-Egyptian Sudan

When Hakki Pasha died in 1873, Emin went back to Neisse with the pasha's widow and children, where he passed them off as his own family, but left suddenly in September 1875, reappearing in Cairo and then departing for Khartoum, where he arrived in December. At this point he took the name "Mehemet Emin" (Arabic Muhammad al-Amin), started a medical practice, and began collecting specimens of plants, animals, and birds, many of which he sent to museums in Europe. Although some regarded him as a Muslim, it is not clear if he ever actually converted.

Charles George Gordon (‘Gordon of Khartoum’), then governor of Egyptian Equatoria, heard of Emin's presence and invited him to be the chief medical officer of the province; Emin assented and arrived there in May 1876. Gordon immediately sent Emin on diplomatic missions to Bunyoro and to Muteesa I of Buganda to the south, where Emin's modest style and fluency in Luganda were quite popular. After 1876, Emin made Lado his base for collecting expeditions throughout the region.

thumb|Emin Bey's travels|220x220px

Governor of Equatoria

In 1878, the Khedive of Egypt appointed governor of Equatoria, giving him the title of Bey. Despite the grand title, there was little for Emin to do; his military force consisted of a few thousand soldiers who controlled no more than a mile's radius around each of their outposts, and the government in Khartoum was indifferent to his proposals for development. He showed himself to be a bitter foe of slavery. In 1879 General Gordon gave Frank Lupton command of a flotilla of river steamers to relieve Emin. When Lupton reached Lado almost two years later, he found that Emin did not want to be relieved. He became Emin's deputy, in charge of the Latuka district based at Tarangole.

The revolt of Muhammad Ahmad that began in 1881 had cut Equatoria off from the outside world by 1883, and the following year, Karam Allah marched south to capture Equatoria and Emin. In 1885, Emin and most of his forces withdrew further south, to Wadelai near Lake Albert.

Death

Emin then entered the service of the German East Africa Company and accompanied Dr. Franz Stuhlmann on an expedition to the lakes in the interior, but was killed by two Arab slave traders at Kinena Station in the Congo Free State, on 23 or 24 October 1892.

Taxon named in his honor

Emin Pasha is commemorated in the scientific name of an East African species of leptotyphlopid snake, Emin Pasha's worm snake Leptotyphlops emini, and an East African species of Passer sparrow, the chestnut sparrow Passer eminibey. He is also honoured in both the specific name and common name of Emin's shrike (Lanius gubernator), the specific name means governor.

See also

  • Emin Pasha Relief Expedition

References

  • A.J. Mounteney Jephson, Diary, Edited by Dorothy Middleton, Hakluyt Society 1969
  • Emin Pasha's family genealogy