author

Ignaz Pallme

1806–1877

Best remembered for a demanding journey through Kordofan in the late 1830s, this Austrian merchant-traveler turned firsthand experience into a vivid account of trade, daily life, and geography in the Sudan. His work gave European readers an unusually detailed look at a region that was little known to them at the time.

1 Audiobook

Travels in Kordofan : Embracing a description of that province of Egypt, and of some of the bordering countries, with a review of the present state of the commerce in those countries, of the habits and customs of the inhabitants, as also an account of the slave hunts taking place under the government of Mehemed Ali

Travels in Kordofan : Embracing a description of that province of Egypt, and of some of the bordering countries, with a review of the present state of the commerce in those countries, of the habits and customs of the inhabitants, as also an account of the slave hunts taking place under the government of Mehemed Ali

by Ignaz Pallme

About the author

Born in 1806 in Steinschönau, in what is now the Czech Republic, Ignaz Samuel Pallme was an Austrian commercial traveler and explorer. He trained for business and later traveled to Egypt on a commercial mission, hoping to help open new trade routes into Central Africa.

That journey led him to Kordofan in present-day Sudan, where he spent about two years in 1837–1839. Pallme became known for the observations he gathered there on local society, commerce, landscape, and everyday customs. His best-known book, Travels in Kordofan, grew out of that experience and remains the work he is most associated with.

He died in 1877 in Hainburg an der Donau. Although he is not among the most famous nineteenth-century travel writers, his writing still stands out for the detail it preserves about Kordofan during a period of growing European interest in northeastern and central Africa.