Heinrich Barth (February 16, 1821 – November 25, 1865) was a German explorer of Africa and scholar.
Barth is one of the greatest of the European explorers of Africa, not necessarily because of the length of his travels (1850–1855) or the time he spent alone without European company in Africa, but because of his singular character.
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Barth was born in Hamburg. He was educated at the Gelehrtenschule des Johanneums and studied at the Berlin University, where he graduated in 1844. He had already visited Italy and Sicily and had formed a plan to journey through the Mediterranean countries. After studying Arabic in London, he set out on his travels in 1845. He acted for the British Foreign Office in 1850.
From Tangier, Barth made his way overland throughout the length of North Africa. He also traveled through Egypt, ascending the Nile to Wadi Halfa and crossing the desert to Berenice. While in Egypt he was attacked and wounded by robbers. Crossing the Sinai peninsula, he traversed Palestine, Syria, Asia Minor, Turkey and Greece, everywhere examining the remains of antiquity; and returned to Berlin in 1847. For a time he was engaged there as Privatdozent, and in preparing for publication the narrative of his Wanderungen durch die Küstenländer des Mittelmeeres, which appeared in 1849.
At the instance of Bunsen, the Prussian ambassador to Westminster, and scientists like Alexander von Humboldt, Barth and Adolf Overweg, a Prussian astronomer, were appointed colleagues of James Richardson, an explorer of the Sahara who had been selected by the British government to open up commercial relations with the states of the central and western Sudan. The party left Marseilles in late 1849, and then left Tripoli early in 1850, with great difficulty and danger crossing the Sahara Desert.
The deaths of Richardson (March 1851) and Overweg (September 1852), victims of the climate, left Barth to carry on the mission alone. Barth was the first European to visit Adamawa in 1851. When he returned to Tripoli in September 1855, his journey had extended over 24° of latitude and 20° of longitude, from Tripoli in the north to Adamawa and Cameroon in the south, and from Lake Chad and Bagirmi in the east to Timbuktu (September 1853) in the west — upward of 12,000 miles (19,000 km). He studied minutely the topography, history, civilizations, languages, and resources of the countries he visited.
His success as an explorer and historian of Africa was based both on his patient character and his scholarly education. He studied in the early 1840s at the University of Berlin under the guidance of scholars such as Alexander von Humboldt, Leopold von Ranke, Friedrich von Schelling and Jakob Grimm, who all laid the foundations of human geography and historical research in the modern sense.
Barth was different from the explorers of the colonial age, because he was interested in the history and culture of the Africans peoples, rather than the possibilities to exploit them. He meticulously documented his observations, and his own journal has become an invaluable source for the study of 19th century Sudanic Africa. Although Barth was not the first European visitor who paid attention to the local oral traditions, he was the first who seriously considered its methodology and usability for historical research. Barth was the first truly scholarly traveler in West Africa. Earlier ones such as René Caillié, Dixon Denham and Hugh Clapperton had no academic knowledge. Barth could read Arabic and was able to investigate the history of some regions, particularly the Songhay empire. He also seems to have learned some African languages. He established close relations with a number of African scholars and rulers, from Muhammad al-Amin al-Kanemi in Bornu, through the Katsina and Sokoto regions to Timbuktu, where his friendship with Ahmad_al-Bakkai_al-Kunti led to his staying in his house and receiving protection from an attempt to seize him.
The story of Barth's travels was written and published simultaneously in English and German, under the title Reisen und Entdeckungen in Nord- und Zentralafrika (Travels and Discoveries in North and Central Africa; 1857–1858, 5 vols., approx. 3,500 pages). It was considered one of the finest works of its kind at the time, being cited by Darwin, and it is still used by African historians, as it remains an important scientific work on African cultures of the age and a source for historians of West Africa.
Except for a title as "CB" (Companion) from the Order of the Bath, Barth himself received no formal recognition of his services from the British government. He returned to Germany, where he prepared a collection of Central African vocabularies (Gotha, 1862–1866). In 1858 he undertook another journey in Asia Minor, and in 1862 visited the Turkish provinces in Europe. In the following year he was granted a professorship of geography (without chair or regular pay) at Berlin University and appointed president of the Geographical Society. His admission to the Prussian Academy of Sciences was denied, as it was claimed that he had achieved nothing for historiography and linguistics. Barth died in Berlin. His grave is preserved in the Protestant Friedhof III der Jerusalems- und Neuen Kirchengemeinde (Cemetery No. III of the congregations of Jerusalem's Church and New Church) in Berlin-Kreuzberg, south of Hallesches Tor.