Charles Neufeld

Karl Neufeld, also known as Charles Neufeld (4 August 1856 – 2 July 1918) was a German merchant, active in 19th-century Sudan, who was kept as a prisoner by the Mahdist state for twelve years and set free after the British victory over the Mahdist forces. He published his autobiography about this experience under the title A Prisoner of the Khaleefa. Twelve Years Captivity at Omdurman in 1899. During the first half of World War I, Neufeld also acted as translator and undercover agent for the German Empire, trying to incite Arabs against the British Empire.

Biography

Neufeld was born in the German province of West Prussia as the son of a landowner and medical doctor. He studied medicine at the University of Leipzig, but finished his studies without a degree. From around 1880, he worked in Cairo, the capital of Egypt, which was an autonomous tributary state of the Ottoman Empire at the time. He was active first as a pharmacist and later as a merchant and married a British nurse named Emma Netherton, with whom he had a daughter. Due to his knowledge of English and Arabic, he took part as a translator in the Gordon Relief Expedition and afterwards continued his business in Aswan, Lower Nubia. Travelling with a trade caravan to Kordofan in western Sudan in 1887, he was captured by members of the Mahdist uprising. He spent the next 12 years, mostly in chains, in captivity in Omdurman, where he met the former Governor-General of Darfur, Rudolf Slatin and Comboni missionary Josef Ohrwalder, who were also imprisoned. In captivity, he converted to Islam and married an Abyssinian woman named Umm Shul, with whom he had two children. Neufeld was liberated by Anglo-Egyptian troops in the aftermath of the Battle of Omdurman in 1898 and subsequently returned to Germany.