Henri Duveyrier

Who was Henri Duveyrier?

Henri Duveyrier was a French explorer of the Sahara born in Paris. In 1857 and 1858, he spent some months in London, where he met Heinrich Barth, then preparing the narrative of his travels in the western Sudan. At the age of nineteen Duveyrier, who had already learned Arabic, began a journey in the northern parts of the Sahara which lasted nearly three years. In 1864, two years after returning to France, he published Exploration du Sahara: les Touareg du nord, for which he received the gold medal of the Paris Geographical Society. In the war of 1870 he was taken prisoner by the Germans. Subsequently he made several other journeys in the Sahara, adding considerably to the knowledge of the regions immediately south of the Atlas, from the eastern confines of Morocco to Tunisia. He also examined the Algerian and Tunisian shats and explored the interior of western Tripoli. Duveyrier devoted special attention to the customs and speech of the Tuareg people, with whom he lived for months at a time, and to the organization of the Senussi.