In 1825, a giraffe boarded a boat at Sennar, near the junction of the Blue and White Niles in the Sudan, and sailed for Paris. In the next year, also at Sennar, a Kurdish cavalry officer named Mahu Bey al-Urfali, representing the Muhammad Ali Pasha regime of Egypt, died of smallpox in a military encampment. What was a Kurd from Urfa, now in southeastern Turkey, doing in the Sudan? Why did a giraffe make the long trip to Paris? And how did a sleepy town 300 km southeast of Khartoum, once the capital of a sultanate, figure in their life journeys? This book answers such questions by viewing the lives of seven remarkable individuals through the lens of global microhistory, to reveal a kaleidoscopic story of peoples, objects, and ideas as they moved through the Nile Valley and the wider world.

The book connects small places and little things to big events across two centuries. It asks: Who or what counts as important in history? Which details deserve attention? And how can we assemble fragmentary sources about ordinary people to give meaningful accounts of the past? Addressing these questions, this learned but accessible study will appeal to university students and scholars of Middle Eastern, African, and global history.