Rumaliza
Muhammad bin Khalfan al-Barwani's legacy is remembered for his contributions to African trade and his role in resisting colonial forces.
Inhabitants of the Arabian Peninsula are documented as trading in slaves from the East African coast as early the second century AD.
Through prolonged contact with the Arabs, a distinctive Swahili ("coastal") culture developed among the Bantu peoples of the region and some converted to Islam.
[4] The Swahili and Arab traders obtained slaves in the interior of East Africa and sold them in the great markets like Zanzibar on the coast.
[6] The Arab trader Tippu Tip from Zanzibar increasingly pushed inland towards the modern-day Democratic Republic of the Congo and reached the Luba region in the late 1850s trading in slaves, ivory, and copper.
The International African Association (IAA) offered their support if Tippu Tip would help them achieve control of the territories in which he had established strong points although it was notionally committed to eliminating the Arab slave trade.
[11] Tippu used trade goods advanced to the company to form an alliance with Rumaliza, who had many men but was short of money and could not obtain loans.
The new company operated between Ujiji and Stanley Falls and in areas to the south of this line, controlled by Abdullah ibn Suleiman as lieutenant of Tippu Tip and Rumaliza.
[12] In 1886 Tippu Tip recognized the Congo Free State, which superseded the IAA, and was made Governor of the eastern areas that were covered by his trading network.
Rumaliza sued for a share in the Dar es Salaam court as a newly-loyal subject of German East Africa which had consolidated control in modern-day Tanzania.
[13] Stories told in the Uele, Aruwimi, Tshuapa, Maniema and Kisangani areas, regions distant and far away from one another, associated Rumaliza and his parties with the kidnapping of women, cutting off men's genitals (to be captured and sold as eunuch slaves), cutting off legs, arms and hands, piercing of noses and ears, burning villages and killings.
[14] The Catholic White Fathers missionaries had established posts in the northwest of Tanganyika that formed an obstacle to Arab incursions into the Maniema region, protected by Captain Léopold Louis Joubert, a former Papal Zouave.
In May 1890 a group of Arabs came close to attacking the White Fathers mission at Mpala on the west shore of Lake Tanganyika, and only withdrew after a storm destroyed a number of their supply boats.
[16] In September 1890 the White Fathers Léonce Bridoux and Francois Coulbois visited Ujiji, where they found Rumaliza and Tippu Tip.
[16] However, Rumaliza was determined to eliminate Léopold Louis Joubert, commander of the forces defending the White Fathers, who was disrupting the slave trade.
He found a huge supply store at Kasongo including ivory, ammunition, food and luxuries such as gold and crystal tableware.
[13] Rumaliza raised a strong force, which clashed with Dhanis' column on 15 October 1893 causing the death of two European leaders and fifty of their soldiers.
[25] On 9 January 1894 Belgian reinforcements arrived under Lothaire, and the same day a shell blew up Rumaliza's ammunition store and burned down the fort containing it.
