active 1820 Abd Salam Shabeeny

Known in library records as Abd Salam Shabeeny, active 1820, he is identified in the 1820 book as Asseed El Hage Abd Salam Shabeeny, a Muslim merchant from Tetuan. In James Grey Jackson’s introduction, Shabeeny is described as having traveled with his father to Timbuctoo at about age fourteen, lived there for several years, then spent time in Housa before returning to Timbuctoo and eventually back to Tetuan.

That experience became the basis of An Account of Timbuctoo and Housa Territories in the Interior of Africa, the only work firmly linked to him in major catalog records and Project Gutenberg. The book was presented to English readers by James Grey Jackson, who explained that he gathered and arranged Shabeeny’s information, making it an early English-language source on West African travel, trade, customs, and society.

Very little else about Shabeeny’s life has been reliably confirmed in the sources available here, which makes the book itself especially valuable. What survives is the voice of a traveler and merchant whose account offered readers a rare window into places that were still little known in English publishing at the time.